


4 












I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. # 




I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. } 

6 



I 

I 



The Devil : 



DOES HE EXIST? 
AND WHAT DOES HE DO ? 

— BY 

FATHER DEL APORTE, 

OF THE SOCIETY OF MEKCY, 

Doctor of Theology. Professor of Dogma in the Faculty of 
Bordeaux. 

^ran£lal£iJ from ilt Si'xtS j)xmtl IzUtmx, 

EEYISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR, 

By MRS. JAMES SADLIEK. 



NEW YOEK: 
D. & J. SADLIER & CO., 31 BARCLAY STREET. 

MONTREAL : 

COR. NOTRE DAME AND ST. FRANCIS XATIER STS. 
1875. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year l&Tt^ 
By D. & J. SADLIER k CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washingt^ 



The Library 

of contrrkss 

WASfiiNOTON 



Stereon-ped by VINCENT DILL, 
56 & 27 New-Chambers St., N. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



Ths valuable and interesting little work 
now first presented to tlie public in an 
English form, appeared, some two or 
tliree years since, in France, where it 
passed through several editions in the 
space of a few weeks. Its popularity 
was immense, notwithstanding that other 
and larger works of a similar nature were 
already extant. Soon after its appear- 
ance, it was brought under my notice 
by an esteemed missionary priest of this 
city, a member of the same community 
as the reverend and learned author. I 
at once commenced its translation, which 



iv teanslator's preface. 

was soon unliappily interrupted by severe 
and protracted family affliction. After 
many attempts to continue the transla- 
tion, I have at length succeeded in ac- 
c mphshing my task, and now present 
Father Delaporte's admirable httle vrork 
to the x^Lmerican public. If it only in- 
terests readers as much it did myself in 
translating it, it will be no less popular 
here than in France. 

New York, Not., 1871. 



LETTER OF Mgr. De SEGUE 

TO THE AUTHOR. 



Eeyerend Father : 

If every one busied himself with 
the Devil as you do, the affairs of God 
would gain by it. You doubtless know 
the curious saying of Voltaire : Satan 
is all Christianity.'' Hence it was that 
the unbelievers of the last century sought 
to destroy, as far they could, belief in the 
Devil and his works. They succeeded 
but too well; and it is not unusual to 
meet now-a-days, even amongst practical 
Christians, people who scarcely believe in 
the existence of Satan. Amid all these 
follies and impiety, Spiritualism again 



vi LETTER OF MGR. DE SEGUE. 

brings forward a little the existence of 
the Devil and the Angels : and we, the 
children of the Church, ought to profin 
by this strange intervention of evil spirits 
on the earth, to derive from it, at least, 
this advantage — that henceforth people 
will believe in the personal existence of 
Satan and the demons. Your excellent 
little book will contribute, among others, 
to bring about this precious result. I 
join all joviv friends in fehcitating you 
thereon, and in wishing this work the 
circulation it deserves. 

L. G. De segue, 

Bishop of St. Denis. 




CONTENTS. 



PAGI5 

I. Importance of the Question . .9 

II. Is it certain that the Devil exists . . 12 

III. Did the Rehellious Spirits, in falling from 

Heaven, lose all ? 21 

IV. If the Evil Spirits are in Hell, how can 

they trouble the Earth ? . . .23 
V. Are the Evil Spirits responsible for all the 

evil ascribed to them ? . . . .27 
VI. But what interest has the Devil in injur- 
ing us ? 32 

VII. The Religion of the Devil ... 36 
VIII. Can a rational Man believe now in Sorcery ? 42 
IX. Can a natural Explanation be given of 

Facts supposed to be Diabolical ? . .55 
X. What is a Contract with the Devil ? . .01 
XL Has the Devil Goat's Feet and Horns ? . 66 
XIL Is the Devil a Prophet ? .... 69 

XIII. Is the Devil a Doctor ? . . . .75 

XIV. On the present Communications with Evil 

Spirits, or Spiritualism . . . .79 

XV. Some very worthy Men believe in the 
agency of Good Spirits ; are they in 
error? . . . . . . .85 

XVI. Spiritism, and the Calling up of the Dead . 95 



viii 



CONTENTS. 



XYII. 


Some good Christians think tlitit they 


PAGB 




can make Tables speak, the Church 






not having" vet decided thereon 


10] 


XYIII. 


Is it, then, a great Fault to converse 






"v^'ith the Spirits, provided one does 






not give up their Faith ? . 


105 


XIX. 


What difference is there between Mag- 






netic Clairvoyance and Spirit ism ? . 


110 


XX. 


Is the Devil the Head of Sqicret Socie- 






ties ? 


IIG 


XXI. 


What is Diabolical Temptation? . 


125 


XXII. 


What is Diabolical Possession ? . 


130 


XXIII. 


What is Exorcism ? . . . . 


138 


XXIY. 


Do Means exist whereby the Laity may 






effectuall)^ combat Satan ? 


141 


XXY. 


On Holy V^ater, the Sign of the Cross, 






and Eelics 


143 


XX YI. 


What is the advantage of the state of 






Grace, in the Struggle with the De- 








.150 


XXYH. 


On the Bread of the Strong 


153 


XXYIII. 


Mary, help of Christians 


157 


XXIX. 


Of Angelical Assistance 


163 


XXX. 


Fmal destmy oi the \ ictors and tne 






"V^n "n mi 1 "nTi p fl 


168 


XXXI. 


Advice to those who believe, and to 






those who believe not 


174 




APPENDIX. 




A. Spirit- 


•rappers are all Eeprobate Spirits . 


179 



B. The Transmigration of Souls . . .183 

C. The Devil's Advocates in the Nineteenth 

Century 194 



THE DEVIL: 



DOES HE EXIST? AXD WHAT DOES HE DO? 



I. 

li^TORTANCE OF THE QUESTION. 

Dear reader, what are jou actually 
doing on earth? You are journeying to- 
wards the house of your eternity, the 
door of which, at some turn of the way, 
death wiU throw open. To find in that 
new and final abode what your heart 
desires. Happiness, religion, conscience, 
humanity, all warn you that you must 
''go about doing good," as did the Man- 
God, our Master and our Model. The 
incomparable privilege of free-will was 
only given you to pub you in the way of 
doing good. Axe you convinced of this ? 



10 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 

— ^Assuredly. Is the practice of virtue 
honorable? — Eyidently. Is the practice 
of virtue conformable to our true inter- 
ests ? — Undoubtedly it is ; under a just 
and good God, to do good is the sure and 
only means of attaining to true happiness. 
This all must admit ; yet how does it 
happen that we so often commit evil, 
v/hich brings us neither happiness nor 
real profit ? Something or some one invites, 
solicits^ entices us. The way of virtue is 
not always smooth and pleasant. It pre- 
sents obstacles against which we may 
have to struggle. The kingdom of hea- 
ven — that is to say, a happy immortal- 
ity — is the prize of exertion; the brave 
alone win it. The life of man on earth 
is a warfare. Either a soldier of virtue, 
with the hope of a Divine reward, or the 
slave of vice, under threat of Divine 
chastisement ; there is nothing between. 

Dear reader, I ask j^ou not to which 
side your heart inclines. Tou reject with 
horror the slavery of vice ; you are a soh 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 11 

dier of yirtue, a soldier of duty, a soldier 
of God. What is requisite for the soldier 
who would fain conquer ?— Courage. Yes, 
but courage alone is not sufficient ; pru- 
dence is also required. Prudence de- 
mands that we apply oy.rselYes to know 
our enemies, their relative strength, their 
tactics, the weapons they »most dread — 
•in a word, that we acquire that science, 
which, guiding courage, secures victory. 
Now, a voice which commands the atten- 
tion even of those who, unhappily, ignore 
the infallible voice of God, the voice of 
Christianity, clearly indicates the several 
enemies of our souls. "Often," it tells 
us, "you will find in yourselves, in hu- 
man society, and even in the material 
world, incitements to infringe on duty." 
But the principal sower of evil here be- 
low, the tempter most formidable, be- 
cause the most skillful and the most 
active, is the reprobate spirit whom pop- 
ular language, following the Gospel, calls 
the Devil; that is, the divider , the over- 



12 DOES THE DEATL EXIST, 



tliYoicer, the disperser, the d.estroyer. This 
great adversary once put to flight, the 
combat is mere play ; if, on the other 
hand, he prevails, all is lost. He has 
made innumerable victims. You, your- 
self, shall one day increase the sad list, if 
you neglect the arms which Jesus Christ 
and His Church have prepared for you. 
By Jesus Christ you can resist, overcome, 
escape the gloomy kingdom of Satan, 
and receive, in heaven, the conqueror's 
palm. Away from Jesus Christ, you are 
the sure prey of Satan. 

Such is Catholic teaching. It suffi- 
ciently indicates that the question of the 
Devil is not only a curious question, but 
a practical question of the greatest im- 
portance. 

11. 

IS IT CERTAIN THAT THE DEVIL EXISTS? 

To most of our readers this question 
appears superfluous ; but we write for 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 13 



every one, and in an age when people 
deny tlie existence of God without being 
sent to the lunatic asylum. Yes, cer- 
tainly, there is an Evil Spirit, and even a" 
multitude of evil spirits. For a time, at 
least in Europe, the devils avoided at- 
tracting attention. The philosophy of 
the eighteenth century had made the 
grossest materialism fashionable ; people 
became accustomed to beheve only what 
was palpable. Naturally, the Devil agreed 
to be forgotten, provided God v/as also 
forgotten. But materialism is too base, 
too absurd to last. Faith in God, a mo- 
ment obscured, shone forth with renewed 
lustre. No sooner it slept than it awoke ; 
this strange and terrible actor, banished 
for a time to the region of fancy, reap- 
peared on the scene, and made himself 
talked of more than ever. 

But where are the proofs of his exist- 
ence? 

1. In the unanimous belief of manldnd. 
In the beginning, say, with the Cath- 



DOES THE DETIL EXIBT, 



olic Churcli, with the JeAvish Synagogue, 
with the heretical and schismatieal sects, 
the traditions of all nations, the Supreme 
Being created three sorts of beings : ma- 
terial beings, spiritual beings, and man, 
comj>osed of sphit and of matter. Among 
the pure spirits, several, having revolted 
against the Creator, lost, by their crime, 
the sovereign good. Once condemned, 
they became obstinate in evil, and incited 
man thereto. The Bible, which often 
mentions these evil sj)irits, names their 
chief Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer ; it calls 
themselves bad angels^ demons (a word 
which in the ancient authors sometimes 
means simply spirits,) and devils. 

This behef makes manifest a providen- 
tial plan so harmonious that it would of 
itseK impress calm right reason. Above 
the created universe, the Inftstte Spieit, 
whose thought conceived and whose power 
created all things. In the universe, all 
below, beings that reflect, without know- 
ing them, the perfections of the Creator. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 15 

These beings form an ascensional ladder, 
from step to step of wliicli beauty goes 
on ever increasing. All above, beings 
who not only reflect, but know the per- 
fections of the Supreme Being, and live 
a life like unto His — a life of intelligence, 
love, freedom. And, forming the tie be- 
tween these two orders, Jmmanity, which, 
by the body, dips into the material world, 
and, by the soul, enters into the spiritual 
world. 'In a word, matter — spirit soldered 
to matter — spirit disengaged from mat- 
ter; there is a complete whole. These 
three parts of the universe must not be 
detached one from the other, as there 
would then be several universes ; all are 
connected together — the material world, 
the human world, the spiritual v/orld. If 
spiritual beings remain attached to the 
Supreme Good, they attract us toward it ; 
if they depart from it, they turn us away 
from it. 

If, then, any one reason falsely, it is 
not mankind, for mankind believes in 



16 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 

good and bad spirits ; it is the individual 
who admires himself so very much that 
he can no more understand the possibil- 
ity of a created being whose perfection 
exceeds his own. 

2. The belief of mankind is based on 
the Divine Word itself. For our sacred 
books speak often of the Devil, and St. 
John formally affirms not only that he 
exists, and that sinners are under his 
influence, but also that the Son of God 
appeared, that He might destroy the 
works of the Devil." (Eph. I, chap, 
ni.) 

As every spirit — not excepting our soul, 
which is not seen by the corporal eye — 
makes itself known by acts which can be 
attributed only to it, so (as we shall soon 
see) the demons have a thousand times 
manifested their existence by acts which 
cannot possibly be ascribed either to man, 
whom they strike, and whose power they 
exceed, or to God or the good spmts, to 
whose sanctity they are opposed. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 17 



The existence of evil spirits is, there- 
fore, certain. 

The demons are guilty and reprobate 
spirits. 

The Manichseans, ancient heretics, au- 
daciously taught the existence of a Frin- 
ciple of Evil, eternal as God, the Principle 
of Good — of a being thoroughly evil, in 
perpetual opposition to God. Monstrous 
error ! Good alone is eternal and neces- 
sary. Evil is the fall of a being which 
came forth good from the Creator's hand. 
When that fall is voluntary, and conse- 
quently criminal, it is named sin. God 
tolerates evil — for a time — in order to 
offer a glorious field for the exercise of 
virtue. But it is absurd to imagine that 
creatures may go on unceasingly insulting 
the Creator ; the hour of justice comes. 

Satan is no longer, as modern romancers 
in religion and philosophy have dreamed, 
a mere allegorical personification of Sin, as 
the Muse is of Poetry or History. From 
Epicurus and Lucretius to Hugo and Lit- 



18 DOES TEE DEYIL EXIST, 



tre, Taine and Kenan, Atheists have been 
almost alone in denying the existence of 
the Deyil. Their denial is easily under- 
stood. How should the wilfully blind, 
who no longer see even the sun, whose 
splendor all proclaim, perceive darkened, 
extinguished stars ? But the Atheists and 
some few Deists are nothing before the 
Church, humanity, and the innumerable 
facts collected and attested by history. 

The demons are very real beings, but 
mere creatures. Originally they made 
part of the glorious army of the heavens, 
that is to say, of the angelic hosts, who, 
in the morning of creation, praised God 
in gladness, and of whom the army of 
stars is the magnificent symbol. Like us, 
but before us, the pure spirits were put 
to the proof. Stronger and more enlight- 
ened than man, the angels who failed in 
their duty were less excusable than man ; 
hence they were irrevocably deprived of 
the Divine gifts, and forever separated 
from the Creator. 



. AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 19 

A child was asked, " Who created the 
angels ?" The answer was easy : " God." 
" But who created the Devil ? " The child 
reflected a while, then exclaimed : God 
made him an angel ; he made himself a 
dcYil." Without knowing it, that child 
spoke as did the Church in the first canon 
of the fourth council of Lateran. 

In what did the crime of the demons 
consist? That is not precisely known, 
nor is it necessary that it should be known. 
According to grave theologians, the future 
incarnation of the Word was announced 
to the angels. Lucifer, their chief, re- 
fused to humble himself before the future 
Christ, inferior to him by his human na- 
ture, and drew into his rebelUon a great 
number of spirits. Others have thought, 
with St. Thomas, that Lucifer and his 
accomplices deemed themselves able, by 
their own strength, to attain to siipevnatu- 
red bliss, and wished to gain it without the 
aid of their Creator. What is certain is, 
that they lost this heoMtiLd.e for having, in 



20 



DOES THE DETXL EXIST, 



the trial proposed to tlieir free will, taken 
the haughty part of clis obedience.^ 

* Vriiat is sujieriiotural bliss, the end of ai^gels and of 
men? A very simple comparison will explain iliis 
fundamental point of religion : A prince had a num- 
ber of servants. To all he owes justice : on all he 
can ; - rifts. If he a.bide by that, what happiness 
soev ,: T i..:.y make them enjoy, their condition will 
not change. Bnt ly a spontaneous act of goodness 
he a i liiss-rs hliiisel: to several amongst them, and 
says : ■ I: is my v.i-l that, henceforth, yon shall be 
no more my servants, but shall be called, and shall 
really be, my cliildren.*' This is an admirable change 
of coridition ; as sons of the great king, they are 
henceforth entitled, if they are faithful to Him, not to 
receive a salary proportionate to their work, but to 
share in the paternal wealth and glory. So God, in 
ordaining men and angels to be His sons, and furnish- 
ing them with means superior to the natural capacity 
of created beings, (by creation mere servants.) dis- 
plays an infinite charity. He who knows how to cor- 
respond therewith shall participate eternally in the 
blissful life of God himself ; he who despises it, or 
deserves to be deprived of it,, exposes himself to a just 
and terrible punishment. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



21 



III. 

DID THE REBELLIOUS SPIRITS, IN FALLING 
FROM HEAYEN, LOSE ALL ? 

No. They lost all their felicity ; they 
did not lose all their power. Deprived 
of their personal gifts, they were not de- 
prived of the faculties inherent in their 
nature. 

Even in the bravest armies, it some- 
times happens, that a soldier fails in his 
duty and commits a crime. Then he is 
degraded, stripped of the uniform and 
the decorations he has dishonored ; he is 
put in irons ; he is declared for ever un- 
worthy to march under the banner;, ho 
has no more right to the noble title of 
soldier ; all the personal advantages which 
he enjoyed are taken away from him. 
He retains, nevertheless, his nature as 
man ; he has, as before, eyes to see, hands 
to act, understanding to know, and a will 
to determine. So the demons, after their 



22 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



revolt had caused them to be expelled 
from heayen, remain such as thev were 
originally constituted, that is to say, 
beings with an intelligence and a power 
superior to the intelligence and power 
of man. 

God made created beings to live one 
with the other. The universe is the hus- 
bandman's field, wherein the good grain 
and the tares grow together till the har- 
vest time. In a family, vhtuous children 
increase the general welfare, vicious chil- 
dren diminish it ; all dwell under the 
same roof. Only, the wise and prudent 
father closely watches the latter, and 
restrains, when necessary, their evil de- 
signs. So it is vath Providence. Each 
one of the angels received, at the begin- 
ning, his share of power. That of the 
rebels has not been destroyed ; they re- 
main actors in the universal drama, as 
the wicked, their imitators, in the social 
drama. Instead of being face to face 
with us, the ministers of light and peace^ 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 23 

tliey are the ministers of trial and pun- 
ishment. A devil overwhelmed Job with 
tribulations ; he proved him, and embel- 
lished his crown. Another devil de- 
stroj^ed the first husbands of Sara, be- 
cause that they, in a holy union, had 
sought only the gratification of their pas- 
sions ; he executed the decrees of Divine 
Justice. The malice of the demons, in 
despite of itself, glorifies God by con- 
tributing tp the execution of His adora- 
ble will. 

IV. 

IF THE EYIL SPIEITS AEE IN HELL, HOW 
CAN THEY TROUBLE THE EARTH? 

There is a Hell, a " place of torments." 
(St. Luke, XVI, 28.) "Christians rightly 
think," says' the Pagan philosopher Cel- 
sus, " that those who live holily shall be 
rewarded after death, and that the wicked 
shall undergo eternal torments. This be- 
lief is, furthermore, common to them and 



2-1 DOES THE BEYIL EXIST, 

all others." Since the time of Celsiis, 
great efforts have been made to get rid 
of the belief in hell, but without success. 
Truth remains. A light-brained skeptic 
wrote one i&ne morning to Voltaire : " I 
have succeeded in proving that there is 
no Hell.*' "You are very fortunate," re- 
plied Yoltaire ; " I am far from that." It 
is fashionable now-a-days to ignore hell, 
and the spirit-rappers and writers of our 
day unanimously favor this delusion, very 
acceptable to all those who do not like 
pain either in this life or the other ; but 
the justice of God, like human justice, 
has its prison. This prison is called 
Hell. 

To it the devils ought to be banished. 
But the Divine Word, and the Church, 
who is its interpreter, say not that all the 
wicked spirits are, since their fall, in 
Hell, but only that " everlasting fire" was 
"prepared for the Devil and his angels." 
Being spirits, the devils do not need to 
be chained in one place to undergo their 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



25 



punishment ; tliey bear it wlieresoever 
tlie Creator permits them to be and to 
act. The good angels who assist ns see 
the face of God, and bear with them 
everywhere the celestial beatitude. In 
like manner, the demons everywhere un- 
dergo their damnation, and several of 
them, if not all, act on earth. Proofs of 
this are on every page of Sacred and 
Profane History. 

Let us first consult the Holy Scrip- 
tures : 

Satan speaks to Eve in the terrestrial 
paradise ; Satan goes about through tha 
world, and witnesses the subUme virtue 
of Job, whom he obtains permission io 
subject to the most severe trials ; many 
devils enter into the bodies of the pos^ 
sessed whom J esus delivers ; St. Paul 
vrarns us that the air w.e breathe is full 
of these invisible spirits ; in the Apoca- 
lypse an angel is seen to descend from 
heaven and bind the old serpent for a 
time, during which he can no longer se- 



26 DOES TEE DEVIL EXIST, 

duce the nations, after vrhicli lie is to be 
iinbonnd, ere. 

Profane Li^:ories, in their ti:.ii_, L ie all 
filled Tvitli prodigies wrought I t thr :l.s 
of Paganism, who vj-ere no other than the 
deyils. Certain ahria^menrs of the class- 
ics represent thes^ narratives as ni^re 
popular legends ; but open the ancient 
authors themselves, and yon vv-ih "ch^re 
see that ail hi^tcry ninst eirher be called 
in question, or the reality o: these niar- 
Tellous facts be denote a, facts vhijh are 
more than ever iinacconntaaie t: the 
unbehever at a time when the laws of 
natnre have been so mnch stn^^ied : very 
easily nnderstC'Od when, with the Chttrch 
and mankind, we know that sphits. as 
well as man, and more f\: :, effect, 
by their wih. changes and modihcations 
in the material world. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO ? 



27 



V. 

AEE THE EVIL SPIKITS EESPONSIBLE FOR 
ALL THE MISCHIEF ASCRIBED TO THEM? 

Not always. A drunkard s^vears that 
tlie Devil appeared to liim, spoke to him, 
struck him. In reality, the Devil simply 
reminded him of the tavern ; the fumes 
of the liquor did the rest. A rascal, 
cleverly availing himself of the credulity 
of simpletons, gets up for himself the 
reputation of being a sorcerer, and boasts 
of having the Devil for his colleague, 
makes his clients pay for consultations 
with which Satan has nothing to do — 
every day our courts of justice condemn 
such tricks, and exculpate the Devil from 
a chimerical complicity. But whence 
comes it that people can, with some 
truth, attribute to the Devil mischief of 
which he is not the author? — From his 
bad reputation, most authentically estab- 
lished. 



28 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



Humanity, expelled from the terres* 
trial paradise, under the weiglit of a 
condemnation the most terrible ; then 
drowned in the waters of the Deluge ; 
then plunged, -vrirh the exception of one 
small nation divinelT protected, into the 
darkness and abominations of idolatry; 
"the "Word made flesh, crucified ; the 
blood of ten millions shed ; the benign 
mission of the Church constantly ob- 
structed by schisms, heresies, persecu- 
tions, and calumnies — there is a very 
incomplete abridgment of the incontest- 
ible works of the eyil spiiits in the moral 
and rehsrious order. 

o 

In the material order, diabohcal action, 
like that of God and the good angels, is 
generally veiled under the appearance 
of events pm-ely natural. The hghtning 
that struck the house in which the chil- 
dren of Job were assembled seemed a 
purely physical eftect : the Holy Scrip- 
ture teaches us that this time Satan him- 
self dh'ected the electric fluid. One day 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



29 



St. Francis de Sales was blessing a 
cliurch-yard ; a torrent of rain prevented 
the ceremony. The saint, who was in no 
wise faint-hearted, made an exorcism, 
and immediately the firmament recovered 
its serenity. Men have always been con- 
vinced that a host of calamities which 
occur in the world are not mere fortui- 
tous combinations of the physical laws 
which govern matter. They believe in 
the indignation, and wrath, and trouble 
which he sends by evil angels," (Ps. 
Lxxvii, 49 ;) and, without neglecting phys- 
ical means of struggling against pesti- 
lence and famine, they have recourse to 
prayer, and events have often proved 
that this weapon is the most powerful. 
Many times, after a procession in honor 
of the Blessed Virgin, a consecration to 
the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the plague 
suddenly ceases. The materialist sees in 
this only a chance coincidence ; popular 
sense sees differently, and it is not mis- 
taken. 



30 DOES THE DEYTL EXIST, 



"It is an impiety," says the learned 
Gerson, " and an error directly contrary 
to Holy "Writ, to deny that the deyils are 
the authors of many surprising effects. 
Those, who regard what is told of this as 
a fable would deserve severe reprehen- 
sion. . . . Sometimes, even learned men 
are prone to this error, because they 
allow their faith to be weatened and the 
natural lights to be obscured. Their soul, 
wholly occupied vdth sensible things, re- 
fers all to the body, and cannot raise 
itself to the spiritual." {De error, circa 
art mcig,) 

Must it be said? The Christians of 
our times have been subjected to the ma- 
teriahstic atmosphere in which they live. 
"Without denying diabohcal agency, in 
principle, they are always disposed to 
deny it in fact. To hear them, one would 
imagine that, fatigued with sixty centu- 
ries of mischievous activity, Satan had 
reall}^ turned hermit. Thus, when, some 
years ago, it was noised about that the 



ATSTD WHAT DOES HE DO? 



81 



venerable Cure d' Ars Iiad to undergo the 
external assaults of the invisible enemy, 
who would believe it ? Many ecclesias- 
tics laughed, like the vulgar, at these sup- 
posed devihsh tricks ! 'But what hap- 
pened one day? It was at St. Trivier, 
where a mission was going on. During 
supper, there was a learned dissertation 
on the fancies of the good cur6, who eat 
too little, slept badly, and took the rats 
for the Devil. But, behold ! at midnight 
they are all suddenly awoke by a fearful 
uproar ; the house is all in confusion ; 
the doors bang, the windows shiver, the 
walls totter, and seem, by their crackling 
noise, as though they were going to fall ! 
In a moment every one is up. They re- 
member that the Cure d'Ars has said, 
"Tou will not be surprised if you chance 
to hear some noise to-night." They rush 
to his room ; he is sound asleep. " Get 
up," they cry, the presbytery is going 
to fall!" "Oh, I know well what it is,'^ 
he replies, smiling; "you must go to 



32 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 

bed ; tliere is nothing to fear." (See hh 
Life, by Monnin.) Next day, no one 
laughed at M. Yianney. 

Habitually more hidden, and for that 
reason more perfidious, diabolical agency 
is but too real; and if humanity were 
left unaided, it would long ago have . been 
crushed in an unequal contest. 

VI. 

BUT WHAT IXTEBEST HAS THE DEYIL IK 
INJURING US? 

The interest of his mahce, his envy, 
his hatred! 

1. It is a general law of creation that 
each superior being attracts and assimi- 
lates to itself the inferior being. Inor- 
ganic matter is attracted by vegetable 
matter, ^getable by animal, aU three by 
man, man by the angel. Less sensible to 
him who can see only with the eyes of 
the body, this superior form of the gen« 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



33 



eral law is not less real than the others ; 
the angel, even fallen, still attracts man ; 
but he attracts him according to the 
actual dispositions of his perverted will, 
to make him bad, as he has himself 
become. 

2. The conduct of bad men helps us, 
alas! to understand that of the Devil. 
They walk in the ways of darkness; 
they rejoice when they have done evil, 
and they take delight in wicked actions. 
Devoured by the want of acting, and no 
longer able to share with man the grace, 
the joy, the purity he has lost, the Devil 
tries to inoculate him with impiety, blas- 
phemy, aversion to the Supreme Good. 
He sees the faithful angel, after having 
conquered in the great struggle between 
the two angelic armies, accomplishing for 
man, his young brother, the charitable 
ministry which has been confided to him ; 
he sees man, overwhelmed with those 
magnificent gifts of which he is ignomin- 
iously despoiled, ascending towards the 



34f DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 

tirone which, his fall left vacant. He is 
jealous, and his jealousy urges him un- 
ceasingly, with sin and by sin, to make 
death reign on earth. In short, power- 
less to strike God, w^hose arm chastises 
his insolence, he tries to avenge himself 
on the weaker beings whom God sur- 
rounds with His paternal tenderness. 
The Apostle St. John tells us so in brief 
but luminous terms : 

^' There was a great battle in heaven. 
Michael and his angels fought with the 
dragon ; and the dragon fought, and his 
angels. And they prevailed not ; neither 
was their place found any more in hea- 
ven. And that great dragon was cast 
out, the old serpent, who is called the 
Devil, and Satan, w^ho seduceth the whole 
world : and he v/as cast forth unto the 
earth ; and his angels were thrown down 
with. him. . . . "Woe to the earth and to 
the sea, because the Devil is come down 
unto you, having great wrath, knowing 
that he hath but a short time. And after 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 35 



the dragon saw that he was cast unto 
the earth, he persecuted -the woman who 
brought forth the man-child, \tlie myste- 
rious looman wJiom the prophet sees clothed 
tvith the sun, Mary ;] and there were given 
to the woman two wings, [to escape him ;] 
. . , and the dragon was angry against 
the woman, and went to make war with 
the rest of her seed, which keep the com- 
mandments of God, and have the testi- 
monj^ of Jesus Christ." (Apoc, xii.) 

Undoubtedly, in this war the Deyil will 
finally gain only an increase of rage and 
confusion at sight of the Blessed, who, 
in such great numbers, shall have con- 
quered him, and whose glory and happi- 
ness his vain attacks shall enhance ; but 
noio, he satisfies his malice, he creates 
an empire for himself, he thwarts the de- 
signs of his conqueror. This is enough 
to make him that " roaring lion who go- 
eth about seeking whom he may devour." 
(I Peter, v, 8.) 



36 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



THE EELIGION OF THE DETIL. 

To speak of religion is to speak of the 
bond Tvliich nnites and binds man to 
• God, in tlie first place, and, afterwards, 
to God's other creatures, accordins: to 
tlieir natui'e and tlieir place ia the gen- 
eral plan of the nniyerse. To adore 
God : to honor good spirits and Tirtnons 
men, whom God, as a good Father, 
makes partakers of his beneficent power : 
to practice justice and charity towards 
his fellow -creatures, and to make the 
material world a means of perfection for 
man, and not an obstacle to the reign of 
God — such are the marks of the true 
religion. False rehgions fan in one or 
more of these four fundamental condi- 
tions, either by excess or omission. Thus 
Protestantism, which gives no honor to 
the angels and saints, sins by omission. 
Assiu'edly, it does none too much for God; 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



37 



hut it should do more for God's friends. 
A certain Norman sailor, having been 
cast, in a storm, on the English coast, 
being very ill, he received a visit from 
the Protestant minister. At first they 
agreed wonderfully Well; the minister 
talked to him of onr Saviour's charity, 
and the sailor found that, with the excep- 
tion of the costume, the minister re- 
placed his priest very well. However, 
he interrupted him, saying, ''But you do 
not speak to me of the Blessed Virgin !" 
" Ko, we do not care about Mary." ''You 
do not care about Mary ! You do not 
honor the Blessed Yirgin, Mother of 
God ! Well, you are not a true priest 
of the true religion!" And the old saik>r 
sent the minister to — all the devils. 

On this last point his zeal was intem- 
perate, but fundamentally he was right. 
Since the preaching of the Gospel, reli- 
gions which formed themselves by sepa- 
ration from Catholicity, the universal 
religion, sin, in general, by omission. 

2 



38 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



Tliey do not wisli to submit on such or 
such a pomt ; if it be a dogma, they deny 
it ; if it be a commandment, they forget 
it. That makes, according to the saying 
of a worthy workman, at his last hour, 
reUgions " very convenient for living, but 
not at all for dyings Not daring to do 
more, the Devil contents himself with 
preventing heretics and schismatics from 
serving God as He deserves to be served. 

Where the splendid hght of the Gospel 
requires no circumspection, the Devil, 
more audacious, demands a sacrilegious 
worship. Idolatry, which covered nearly 
the whole earth from the Deluge to the 
coming of Christ, and reigns still in im- 
mense countries, consists in this double 
crime : rendering to created spirits the 
worship of adoration, due to God alone, 
and rendering that worship to evil spirits, 
through fear, interest, or human respect. 

The authors of many books giving 
minute details on the religions of anti- 
quity, might have avoided blunders, if 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 39 



tliey had known liow to read in the 
Psalmist that clear and precise affirma- 
tion, "All the gods of the Gentiles 
AEE DEYILS," (Ps. xcv ;) and in St. Paul, 
who had a near view of Paganism still 
living and master of the world : " The 
things which the heathens sacrifice, thej^ 
sacrifice to devils, and not to God." 
(I Cor., X.) So that Paganism is the 
religion of the Devil, nothing else. 

One is amazed — and no wonder — to 
see men who were not struck with mental 
aberration, prostrate themselves before 
carved wood and stone, before the stars 
of the firmament, and even before vile 
animals ; but a more serious and pro- 
found stu.dy of Paganism has shown that, 
in general. Pagans did not adore their 
statues any more than we do ours ; they 
adored the spirits which they believed to 
reside in those statues, in those stars, in 
those animals, spirits which, often, gave 
proofs of their power. 

The first of theologians, and the most 



40 



p: : -l^i:-: St. Tlioma^, 

lias given :: 
isiii ir. It''";' "Ti -.- : " Jtlan e 

i;: : :;/.:-r :: i_i : latrr, bv iis- 
Gi^r- :: i.Zt:;::::^, by the pleasure 
lie f onnd in syii. i - i - riitations, 
and by liis i^L::::i.:f, 1:: fimda- 
mental re 
sough: ii. :Lf :".r-:l-. : 1.:^ ii :o 

adore tliein "1.:.^: :Lt :: 
flmrem worlchig ceHaiv. :l;'.;i .'. . ; 
their woiic: ' r.r . ' ;," ^. Tli., 
n,n, 94 

Xe: : : 1. 1^ ~e to the cradlv : 
worldj and better instructed in : li^ i :: r 
facts, the ancient nations knew peiieeuj 
well that spirits; exercised a contiaual 
agency in the imiver^r, TLt :_:.:erial- 
istic ]3hilosophy. 1 :: ::::bntes all ex- 
ternal phenomen: : h — ^ - : intly and 
everywhere blind. " lenies that 

any spirit whats r : : .li ever inter- 
fere in the distiibntion of rain and fine 
weather y is an : : : paratively recent. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



41 



On tlie oilier hand, to obtain from us tlie 
homage tliey no longer merit, and the 
adoration which is due to God alone, is 
the constant ambition of the angels of 
the abyss. Let us open the Gospel. The 
Deyil approaches Jesus, whom he does 
not yet know, but whose holiness disturbs 
and irritates him, trying to urge him to 
an act of pride, then to an act of pre- 
sumption ; and, finally, showing him the 
kingdoms of the world, and all the glory 
thereof, tells him, "All this will I give to 
thee, if, falling down, thou wilt adore 
me!" Behold the depth of the Devil's 
thought, to be adored. (And they are 
like unto him who, in the delirium of 
their shameful passions, are wilhng to 
forget their Creator's right, and say to 
them, "I adore thee!") Satan, that ape 
of God, as he is called by the Fathers, 
pretends to reign in His place, at least 
over a portion of mankind. By a just 
and terrible judgment, God has left men 
free to choose their own master, and the 



4Z DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 

Deyii, fostering their passions, to deceive 
tliem, lias altars raised to himself, which 
the Cross alone could miraculously over- 
throw. 

Finally, to adore one's self is a learned 
folly which cannot become popular. The 
nations adore either a Supreme Spirit, 
or spirits whose power, limited undoubt- 
edly, yet superior to ours, dazzles them. 



yni. 

CAN A EATIOXAL 3IAX BELIEVE NOW IN 
SOECEET ? 

This question of sorcery is very grave. 
It involves the external and visible agency 
of oui' invisible foes. All mankind has 
believed, fi'om the most remote ages, in 
the existence of sorcery. Antiquity called 
it yncfgic, a word which, sometimes, signi- 
fies merely superior learning, lihe that of 
the three kings who came to Bethlehem 
to adore Our Lord — magi kings, but not 



AND WHAT DOES HE .DO ? 



43 



magicians. The name of tlmirgie was 
given to the invocation of spirits sup- 
^^osed to be beneficent, and that of [foUie 
fo the having recourse to wicked spirits 
to obtain the success of criminal de- 
signs. 

The Bible does not confine itself to 
declaring that the object of idolatrous 
Avorship is the devils ; it signalizes and 
condemns in almost every page the real 
and criminal relations of the idolaters 
with their gods, with those " strange 
gods . . . that were newly gotten up, 
whom their fathers worshipped not." 
(Deut. XXXII, 16, 17.) 

Achab refuses to hear Micheas. Mi- 
cheas tells him, There came forth a 
spirit, and stood before the Lord, and 
said : ' I will deceive him.' And the Lord 
said to him : ' By what means ?' And he 
said: 'I will go forth, and be a lying 
spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' 
And the Lord said to him : ' Thou shalt 
deceive him, and shalt prevail ; go forth. 



44 DOES THE DBYIL EXIST, 



and do so.'" "Now, therefore," con- 
tinues Miclieas, "behold the Lord hath 
giyen a lying spirit in the mouth of aU 
thy prophets, . . . and the Lord hath 
spoken eyil against thee." (Ill Kings, 

XXII.) ' 

So Achab dies, and his son Ochozias 
succeeds him. Dangerously ill in his 
turn, the new king sends to ask Beelze- 
bub, the god of Accaron, whether he is 
to recover from his illness. 

Then the angel of the Lord sends 
Elias, the prophet, to meet his messen- 
gers, and he says to them : "'Is there not 
a God in Israel, that ye go to consult 
Beelzebub, the god of Accaron ? Where- 
fore, go tell the king, thy master, thus 
sayeth the Lord : ' From the bed on which 
thou art gone up, thou shalt not come 
down, but thou shalt surely die.' . . . 
So he died, according to the word of the 
Lord which Elias spake." (IV Kings, 
chap. I.) Hard lesson for those who 
think it allowable to consult, only in 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



45 



case of illness, as they say, modern ora- 
cles, so perfectly identical with those of 
old ! 

But let us hear a touching story related 
in the Third Book of Kings. Elias, the 
prophet of the true God, presenting him- 
self before Achab, demands that he shall 
gather together all the people, as also 
all his false prophets, on Mount CarmeL 
When all were assembled, the prophet of 
God said : How long do jou halt be- 
tween two sides? If the Lord be God, 
follow him ; but if Baal, then follow 
him/' And the people did not answer 
him a word. And Elias said again to 
the people : ^' I only remain a prophet of 
the Lord ; but the prophets of Baal are 
four hundred and fifty men. Let two 
bullocks be given us, and let them choose 
one bullock for themselves, and cut it in 
pieces, and lay it upon wood, but put no 
fire under; and I will dress the other 
bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no 
fire under it. Call ye on the names of 



46 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 

your gods, and I will call on the name of 
my Lord." 

Specially enlightened from above, Elias 
counts on a miracle ; but tlie false proph- 
ets are not frightened. The}^ know that 
the Deyil habitually aids them in their 
magical operations ; they agree, there- 
fore, to a public test, the consequences 
of which will be dreadful, in case of fail- 
ure. So when they had placed the vic- 
tim on the Yv^ood, they began to call on 
Baal, and to dance around their altars ; 
but no answer came, no fire to kindle the 
wood. Elias said jestingly to them : 
" Cry with a louder voice, for he is a god ; 
and, perhaps, he is talking, or is in an 
inn, or on a journey ; or perhaps he is 
asleep." New incantations were tried, 
and great magical expedients. They 
make, according to the custom of their 
idolatrous rites, incisions in their flesh 
with knives and lancets ; their blood 
flows in streams. But the power of the 
Devil is still controlled by a superior 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



47 



power. Elias acts in liis turn. He im- 
molates the yictim, places it on the altar, 
over which he had caused several buckets 
of water to be thrown ; then he prays, 
and suddenly, before all the people, fire 
from heaven consumes the holocaust, the 
wood, the stones, the dust, even, and the 
water that v/as in the trench. (Ill 
Kings, XVIII.) 

By the prophet's orders the four hun- 
dred and fifty priests of Baal were put. 
to death. Protected by the impious 
x4.chab, the sworn enemy of Elias, and 
fed at the table of Jezabel, the queen, 
these seducers would have known how to 
defend themselves, if the miracle wrought 
by the prophet of the true God had not 
been a crushing evidence. 

The apostolic times present, in their 
turn, the best authenticated acts of sor- 
cery. St. Paul found at Salamis, in the 
house of the pro-consul, Sergius Paulus, 
a magician named Elymas. The Apostle 
did not say to the pro-consul, as certain 



48 



DOES THE DEYEL EXIST, 



enliglitened men of modern times would 
liaye said, ''This wretch is only a jug- 
gler." Filled with the Holy Ghost, rej^Le- 
tus Spiritu Sancfo, he looks upon him, 
calls him " son of the Devil," and in the 
name of the Lord, strikes him with blind- 
ness. (Acts, XIII.) Another day, in the 
town of Pliilippi, Paul met a young girl 
who had a divining spirit, {sjnritum 
pyflwrds,) and by reason thereof gained 
much money for her masters. The Apos- 
tle commanded the spirit to depart ; the 
sorceress became, thenceforth, powerless 
to continue her trade. The consequence 
Avas the indignation of her masters and a 
popular tumult. (Acts, xxi.) 

But a drama, too little studied, is the 
struggle between St. Peter, the founder 
of the Church, and Simon, the magician. 
This Simon, who bore the same name 
that Peter had before his call, appears at 
the beginning of Christianity as the ichief 
representative of the infernal powers, 
who, vanquished on Calvary, Avere bound 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



49 



to continne to tlie end tlie contest against 
the society cliyinely founded, but could 
never preyail. The learned may find, in 
the Annals of Baronius, an enumeration 
of grave authors, both Pagan and Chris- 
tian, who relate the facts of which vre 
can here give only a summary. 

The preaching of the Gospel was 
scare ely commenced, when Simon recog- 
xxizes in the wonders wrought by the fish- 
ermen of Genezareth, a power superior 
to that of the devils. Immediately he 
hastens to offer the Apostles a sum of 
money, probably considerable, to enable 
liim also, by the imposition of hands, to 
communicate the Holy Ghost. (Doubt- 
less, he gTove himself little concern about 
communicating lioliness ; he had in view 
only the extraordinary gifts which then 
frequently accompanied confiimiation.) 
The apostles indignantly repulsed him, 
and exhorted him to do penance. Far 
from heeding these useful and charitable 
counsels, Simon is hardened, and, profit- 



50 DOES TRE DEYIL EXIST, 



ing by tlie hatred of the Jews for the 
Apostles, lie calls liimself tlie Power of 
God, and pretends to ho-ye come down as 
Father amongst tlie Samaritans^ as Son 
amongst the Jews, and to go to other 
nations as the Holy Grhost. 

Immorality is the usual companion of 
impiety; the magician brings with him a 
woman bought in a' bad house, in Tyre, 
and presents her as the first conception 
of his spirit, and the mother of all crea- 
tion. In Pagan countries the imposter 
says nothing of the Father, Son, or Holy 
Ghost ; he causes himself to be wor- 
shipped as Jupiter ; Helen, his concu- 
bine, is Minerva ; and the priests of the 
god and goddess honor them both by 
practices of magic and habits of de- 
bauchery. 

Simon Peter, vicar of Jesus Christ, 
and Simon Jupiter, first-born of Satan, 
according to St. Ireneeus, meet at Eome, 
under Nero, Simon Peter amongst the 
poor whom he is evangelizing, Simon 



AND YTOAT DOES HE DO? 



51 



Jupiter at tlie court of the Emperor, 
passionately devoted to magic, and desi- 
rous, says Pliny, of succeeding by that 
black art in commanding the gods them- 
selves. 

The magician promises to fly in the 
air in the amphitheatre, before all the 
people. On the day appointed, he actu- 
ally does fulfil his promise, and, ascends, 
borne up invisibly by devils,, amid the 
acclamations of the multitude. But a 
man in the crowd below kneels and 
prays ; it is Simon Peter. The prayer 
of the Apostle ascends to the throne of 
God ; the vanquished devils cease to bear 
up their accomplice, who falls to the 
ground and breaks his legs. His blood 
besprinkles even the Emperor, and he 
dies impenitent two days after. The 
people, v/itnessing this terrible scene, be- 
gin to believe in the power of the Cruci- 
fied, Vv^iom Simon Peter publicly invoked. 
It is true Simon Peter shall die, in his 
turn, on the cross ; but his death shall be 



52 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



for the Church he founds the beginning 
of an endless reign. 

' The first ages of the Church reproduce, 
under a thousand forms, and in all places, 
this first contest and this first triumph. 
The Fathers, in their discussions vnili 
Pagans, do not say: "Your Paganism is 
onty a cheat, an imposture ! They 
know, often by their personed experience, 
that the d-eyils manifest ihemselvos bj' 
Pacts. (Arnobus, for example, before 
his conversion, interrogated enchanted 
amulets, which gave him answers as intel- 
ligible as those of the tables to our mod- 
ern spirituahsts ; furthermore, spoken an- 
swers !) The Fathers say to the nations : 
"Behold, the power of your demons 
everywhere yields to the power of Christ. 
Plence, Christ is the conqueror, and tJie 
only Master Vv^ho must be served." 

Magic survives the ruin of Paganism 
as a pubhc vrorship. Proscribed and 
forced to hide itself, the traffic with 
devils assumes a more and more malevo- 



AND WAT DOES HE DO? 



53 



lent cliaracter. . Civil, as well as religious 
laws, pimisli it witli severity, yet do not 
succeed in abolishing it. It is, in fact, 
one of tliose plagues the germs of which 
are always in existence. Ever will the 
evil spirits be ready to offer services for 
Yv hich they shall one day make people 
pay dear ; ever vvdll rampant human pas- 
sions go the length even of making com- 
pact with the enemy, providedi they are 
immediately satisfied. 

We can neither, then, in this little 
work, adduce the testimonies of all pro- 
fane historians, agreeing with tliose of 
all the Fathers, nor sketch the history of 
sorcery from the beginning of Christian- 
ity to our daj&. 

Two remarks only are here neces- 
sary. 

1. The palmy time of sorcery v/as not 
at all in the Middle Ages, but in the 
enlightened age of the Eevival and the 
Eeformation. England, after becoming 
Protestant, burned witches and wizards 



54 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



by thousands ; lier most authentic histo- 
rians record the fact. 

2. The process used by the magistracy 
against sorcerers consisted not, as has 
been said either wickedly or foohshly, in 
subjecting the accused to tortures, amid 
which they confessed anything and every- 
thing. Tlie magistrates of the Middle 
Ages and of the first part of modern 
times were neither idiots, nor blood- 
suckers. They began by investigating 
the affair according to the common rules 
of law proceedings, and wiien proof was 
made, that is to say, when the accused 
Yv^as found guilty, then, according to. the 
custom of the time, he or she might be 
put to the torture, to obtain either con- 
fession, which seemed a necessary repa- 
ration, or the discovery of the accom- 
plices. That there were abuses in these 
matters is very certain ; but such was the 
rule. As to the real guilt of the con- 
demned, it results, amongst other things, 
from the calm and serious confession 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



55 



made, in tlie moment of torture, by a 
great number of sorcerers who were not 
ignorant that this confession was of no 
human advantage to them. M. Bizouard, 
who has studied the accounts of manj- 
of these trials, makes the judicious re- 
mark that, the oldest and most guilty 
usually died in despair, whereas the 
younger and less culpable asked pardon 
of God and man, and died penitent. 

Cases of sorcery have become more 
rare during these last two centuries. We 
have stated the reason. The wind was 
setting towards materialism, and the evil 
spirit seemed to be dead. 

IX. 

CAN A NATUEAL EXPLANATION BE GIVEN OF 
FACTS SUPPOSED TO BE DIABOLICAL? 

Sometimes, doubtless, but not always. 
Long before our "philosophers," Daniel 
caught the priests of Bel in the act of 
imposture. 



56 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



King Nabuclioclonosor said to tlie 
TOimg Israelite v/lio refused to prostrate 
liimself ' before the idol: ''Why dost 
thou not adore Bel? Thinkest thou he 
is not a living God ? Seest thou not how 
much he eats and drinks every day?" 
Daniel smiled and said : " O king, be not 
deceived, for this Bel is but clay withm 
and brass without ; neither hath he eaten 
at any time.'' The king, being angry, 
called for his priests, and sa;id to them : 
"If you tell me not who it is that eateth 
up these expenses, you shall die. But if 
you G&n show that Bel eateth these 
things, Daniel shall die, because he hath 
blasphemed against Bel." And Daniel 
said to the king : "Be it done according 
to thy word." Nov/ the priests of Bel 
were seventy, besides their wives and 
children. And the king went with Dan- 
iel into the temple of Bel. And the 
priests of Bel said : " Behold, we go out ; 
and do thou, O king, set on the meats, 
and make ready the wine, and shut the 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



57 



door fast, and seal it with tliy own ring." 
Tiie king then causes to be brought the 
usual provision of the god, twelve great 
measures of fine flour, forty sheep, and 
sixty vessels of wine. This god was not 
a small eater ! Daniel, on his side, 
strews the pavement with an impercep- 
tible layer of ashes. The morrow came ; 
the seal is found unbroken, the doors 
are opened. The table of the god is 
empty!!! Great art thou, O Bel," 
cried the king. Daniel laughed: /'Be- 
hold this pavement ; mark whose foot- 
steps these are." The priests of the idols 
had come during the night, with their 
families, to sup in place of the god and 
at the expense of his credulous worship- 
pers. (Daniel, xiv.) 

Many reasons explain the considerable 
share which imposture often had in oper- 
ations considered as magical. The power 
of the devils is in itself limited, and, on 
the other hand, they do not communicate 
it with boundless liberality. The state 



58 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



of tlieurgist, magician, sorcerer, magne- 
tizer, ''medium," confederate of Satan, 
appears to many lucrative and advanta- 
geous ; many, neither knowing liow, nor 
daring, nor being able to bold intercourse 
vritb spirits, have had recourse to jug- 
glery. Imposture is frequently mani- 
fested in the works of the last defenders 
of. Paganism when it was giving way 
before the Gospel. The oracles vrere 
silent ; they made oracles. Prodigies 
ceased ; they feigned to work prodigies. 
Precisely because the nations had been 
accustomed to superhuman proofs of 
the reality and povv'er of spirits, it was 
felt that the cause of Paganism vvas 
lost, if diabolical wonders disappeared 
from the scene before evangehcal mira- 
cles. 

Eecourse v/as then had to skilful im- 
posture ; the famous Life of ApoUonius 
of Thyane, a set-off for the Man-God, 
was everywhere circulated ; the physical 
sciences, then somewhat advanced, were 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO ? 59 



employed to counterfeit what was no 
longer to be done. 

When an unscrupulous man has no 
more good money, he issues bad; the 
latter is taken, because the value of the 
former was recognized. The true reason 
why pretended sorcerers so easily find 
dupes, is that there have been, and still 
are, real sorcerer^. The more Christian 
a country is, the rarer they are. Hence 
it is that M. Mullois could say to his 
French readers : " A sorcerer is a rascal, 
and he that listens to him is a fool." 
Hence it is that our card-drawers and 
fortune-tellers are only swindlers em- 
ployed in shearing a flock of simpletons. 
But in China, even now, as testified by 
our holiest missionaries, magical influ- 
ences are so active that tiuo tlioiisand 
Pagans, on an average, in the course of 
the year, have themselves baptized to 
escape the external power of the devils. 

In the seventeenth century Fontenelle 
wrote a History of Oracles^ an ingenious, 



60 



DOES THE DETIL EXIST, 



but rather superficial dissertation, in 
Trliieli the superhuman events of Pagan- 
ism vreie humanly explained. Father 
Baltus replied so judieiouslT that Fon- 
tenelle, a man of mind and taste as he 
was, left his book there, and said that 
Father Baltus had converted lurn to tJie 
Devil! In our own days, anti-Christian 
authors, proud of a small stock of erudi- 
tion, with some tincture of physics, have 
altered the groimdwork of Fontenelle's 
thesis by extending it to the Divine super- 
natuiTd itself. Have we not seen, as it 
were yesterday, an audacious Atheist 
transform into tricks of jugglery the very 
mii'acles of the Gospel? Thousands of 
men fed in the desert with five loaves ; 
the waves of the sea suddenly calmed; 
multitudes of the sick, the bhnd, the 
deaf, the lame, paralytics, lepers, etc., 
instantaneously cured, some in distant 
places; the dead themselves raised before 
a whole people, before the learned of 
that time, infuiiate enemies of Christ — 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 61 

all tliat, thanks .to a certain scientific 
jargon very fit to convince idlers— all 
that is explained natueally ! 

Brave philosophers ! They prove to a 
certainty that they are not sorcerers ! 
But if they will only condescend so far 
as to open their eyes and look at what is 
being done, even at this day, by spiritism, 
they will see that communication with 
spirits is not a fable, but, alas, a fearful 
reality ! 

X. 

VmAT IS A CONTKACT WITH THE DEVIL? 

It is a contract by virtue of which the 
Devil grants to man a certam share of 
his power, in. consideration of a price 
v/hich he demands, and which is usually 
the renunciation of eternal salvation. 
Here we must distinguish, with St. Thom- 
as, between the express contract and that 
which is imvUcity or understood. Yv^hen 
the Devil is invoked, appears under a 



62 



DOES THE DETIL EXIST, 



visible form, converses with the nnfortu- 
31 ate being who has called upon him, dis- 
cusses with him the conditions of his un- 
hallowed favors, and receives in retui'n 
a promise of obedience, an abjuration of 
baptism, there is an express contract. 

The contract is implicit when, with the 
legitimate suspicion that Satan is playing 
a part in certain mysterious practices, 
such as divers modes of incantation by 
the wand, by cards, by table-turning, 
recourse is still had to those practices. 

It is evident that a contract with the 
Devil is an enormous crime. Certain 
authors, even Catholic authors, seem to 
believe it impossible. If, instead of the- 
orizing at theh desk, they would question 
the pastors of our iTiral districts, they 
would tell them that these abominable 
doings are still going on ; they would tell 
them that sorcerers, touched by gi^ace, 
have confessed, on beginning a new Hfe, 
the reahty of these contracts, which they 
had signed with theh blood. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



63 



Some crazy indiyiduals think them- 
selves possessed; others imagine that 
they have made such contracts; just as 
certain other lunatics fancy themselves 
emperors or gods ; but all the predeces- 
sors of Simon the Magician and his 
whole race cannot be considered as in- 
sane. 

St. Augustine {De div. qiices,, 79) for- 
mally attributes the prodigies wrought 
by magicians to "contracts" properly so 
called — magi faciimt miracida per privatos 
contractus — and he explains why the 
devils, desirous of being honored, show 
themselves faithful to their promises. 
He adds that if, in the sacrilegious rites 
of the worship of evil spirits, the holy 
name of God is found mixed, up, the suc- 
cess of the operation is not on that ac- 
count a grace from on high, but rather a 
terrible punishment. For this is the way 
of bhndness and of hardness. An obser- 
vation which we recommend to the apol- 
ogists of superstitious practices, which 



64 



DOES TKE DEVIL EXIST, 



cannot be criminal, tliey maintain, since 
tliej are mingled with pious prayers and 
blessed objects. 

Tlie compact with Satan, more horrible 
in Christians, since it then includes a 
formal renunciation of Our SaTiour Jesus 
Christ, is more frequent amongst infidels, 
where it is often the very foundation of 
idolatry. 

Amongst numerous examples of anti- 
baptism, in the state of general custom, 
we shall cite "nagualism," (iiaJmal, genius, 
famihar deTil.) Missionaries found a 
strange superstition preyailing all over 
Mexico. Before admitting a postulant to 
initiation (when he had been a Christian) 
the naguahst master makes him renounce 
the Saviour, and ciu'se the invocation of 
the Virgin and the Saints. He afterwards 
washed the head and the different parts 
of the body where he had received the 
baptismal unction, in order, he said, to 
efface aU traces thereof. The child was 
dedicated to the visibh or invisiMe pro- 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 65 



tedor of his whole Kfe. The master then 
opened a vein behind the ear, or under 
the tongue, drew thence some drops of 
blood, and offered it to the Deyil, in 
token of the compact which the child 
contracted with his nagual. Before leav- 
ing him, the master named to the father 
the forest or the cavern to which, at the 
age of reason, the child was to repair in 
order to ratify, in person, with his nagual, 
the contract entered into in his name. 
(Paris lloiiiteur, March 16 and 17, 1854.) 
Afterwards, the youth repaired to the 
place appointed, and, amid the horror of 
the night, offered sacrifice to the demon^ 
who caused his nagual to appear under 
the form of the animal whose name he 
bore, and who then showed himself gentle 
and caressing. This interview is, as it 
were, the seal of the compact made with 
the Devil. 



66 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



XI. 

HAS THE DEYIL GOAT'S FEET AND HOEN'S ? 

Haying no body, the Devil lias neitlier 
feet nor liorns of any kind. If, vritli 
God's permission, lie enters into direct 
communication witli man, lie must have 
recourse, like the good angels themselves, 
to a visible form. 

Probably all forms are not permitted 
to him. 

The corporal form is the natural image 
of the moral state. If, amongst us now, 
beauty and vice, virtue and ugliness' are 
often enough united, that is but a pro- 
visional consequence of the state of trial. 
The blessed will shine eternally with a 
beauty proportionate to the splendor of 
their virtues ; the ugliness of the damned 
will be proportionate to the greatness of 
their crimes. When the good angels ajD- 
pear to men, it is under a majestic and 
graceful form. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO ? 67 



Satan lost Lis beauty with liis justice. 
He is moral ugliness itself. "We may con- 
ceive that his Judge and Master, when 
He allows him to show himself visibly, 
compels him to wear habitually a cor- 
poral form which reveals his moral degra- 
dation. The goat being, in the grand 
scene of the Last Judgment, the symbol 
of the slaves of sin, there is nothing to 
prevent us from admitting that the Devil 
may sometimes have shown himself un- 
der that form, or some other similar one. 
In Eden he bore that of a serpent ; and 
the history of several saints shows him 
under the human form, debased by the 
expression of vice, a form more ignomi- 
nious still than that of the animals. 

St. Stanislaus Kotska and the venera- 
ble Cure of Ars saw him in the form of a 
dog, which is the symbol of the shame- 
less vice. In certain circumstances, he 
may take temporary possession of the 
body of a real animal, and make it the 
instrument of his illusions. This is the 



68 DOES THE de^t:l exist, 

most; natural explanation of the worsliip 
of animals, such as sacrecl sei-pents, the 
ox, apis, etc. The cleyils wrought in 
animals the same prodigies as in statues. 

St. Paul warns us that Satan can trans- 
form himself into an angel of light, and 
we read of his assuming the appearance 
of holy personages, the better to seduce, 
as, on occasion, he speaks in devout lan- 
guage the better to persuade. Against 
an enemy so artful the infallible hght of 
the Church is very necessary. 

But this question of the several forms 
which the devil may assume has nothing 
to do with faith. "What is certain is, 
that the worshippers of the Devil have 
often represented him under the form of 
a goat or some other hideous figure. We 
may be convinced of this by seeing the 
oriental idols in our museums. To us, 
these are frightful and grotesque figures ; 
to the idolaters by whom they were fab- 
ricated, these statues were the dwelling 
and the image of their divinities ! Divin- 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 69 

ities deformed, unsliapely, without beauty 
or harmony ; unquiet pov/ers, fallen 
angels ! 

Christian artists are not the inventors 
of this symboKsm, nevertheless they have 
very judiciously adopted it. To those 
embellishers of Satan who give to tho 
vices of which he is the father an en- 
chanting appearance, they §re true to 
the part they play : Catholic art has 
another, more salutary and more true. 

XII. 

IS THE DEVIL A PEOPHET ? 

God alone knows future events that 
depend on free causes. For instance, 
what shall be done and what willed by 
some one who shall only be born many 
ages hence? He alone, for instance, 
could dictate to the sacred writers, more 
than eight hundred years in advance, the 
most minute and the most precise details 



70 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



concerning the acts of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

But the Deyil maj know what our eye 
perceiveth not, p.nd what is passing in a 
place very far aw^ay. A pure spirit, not 
subjected, as we are, to know only 
through the medium of corporal organs, 
sees more things at once, and sees deeper 
than we do. He msbj, besides, thanks to 
his potent intelligence and his long expe- 
rience, draw better than we from the 
present v/hat he knovrs, by conjecture, of 
the future. Finally, he may announce 
things that he counts on accomplishing 
himself, or having accomplished by those 
who willingly receive his inspiration. 
This explains the justice, of certain an- 
swers given by the oracles of the Pagans. 
These oracles, be it remembered, always 
played an immense part in private and 
in pubhc life, amongst idolatrous nations, 
ancient and modern. Thev not onlv 
consulted them' on the future, but spe- 
cially asked advice from them, which 



AND WHAT BOE>S HE DO? 71 

aclyice was foUoYv'ed with blind confi- 
dence. Some skeptics may have, doubt- 
less, scoffed at the omens, as other mi- 
believers now scoff at even the Divine 
prophecies of the Gospel ; but these 
were exceptions, and the evil spirits, by 
their oracles, ruled Greece and Rome, as 
they still, by similar means, rule Guinea 
and Congo. 

The most famous oracle was that of 
Delphi. Cresus, king of Lydi a, as He- 
rodotus relates, wanted, one day, to put 
it to the trial, before asking its advice. 
Deputies set out from Sardes, with orders 
to ask the oracle, the hundredth day 
after their departure, what their king 
was doing that day. The priestess of 
Apollo answers them : My senses are 
struck vfith the smell of a turtle, which 
is being cooked with lamb's flesh in a 
brazen cauldron, the cover of which is 
also of brass." Cresus himself had actu- 
ally cut up a turtle and a lamb, and had 
them cooked in a brazen vessel ! Seeing 



72 



DOES THE DETTL EXIST, 



at a distance T\'as practiced before Mes- 
mer and the modern magnetizers. Othei 
facts show the Devil having recourse to 
gasconade, when the future puzzles him. 
Being consulted by Pyi'rhus, who vras 
thinking of attacking the Eomans, the 
oracle answers : I say thou the Eomans 
can beat ; " ^ which likewise signifies : " I 
say the Eomans can beat thee." "With 
this wretched play on words, the oracle 
was sure to be always right. 

Tery often, those spirits of darkness 
gave, either through ignorance or malice, 
answers that were absolutely false, as we 
see by the passage fi'om Micheas, quoted 
hereafter. Sometimes, but very rarely, 
God compelled them, or their slaves, to 
proclaim the truth. This is seen by the 
stoiy of Balaam. Balaam was a magi- 
cian sold to the devils ; brought by King 
Balak, the enemy of the people of Israel. 
in sight of the camp of the Hebrews, to 
curse them, he prophesies the mysterious 
Aio tCj iEacide, Piomanos vincere posse. 



AND WHAT DOEB HE DO? 



Star wliicli was to rise from Jacob on tlie 
world. 

Every one knows tliat tlie bloody sacri- 
fice of tlie Redeeming God marked the 
end of the reign of oracles. Tliey 
became silent. But how? Was it be- 
cause, at last^ some ingenious philoso- 
phers had discovered the fraud of the 
interpreters of the godr^, just as our 
tribunals of to-day discover the impos- 
ture of so-called sorcerers? Not at all. 
But at the moment when human interest 
more than ever urged them to speak, 
they were silent. The idohiters of those 
days well knew the cause of that silence. 

What wonder,"' cries the famous Pagan 

philosopher Porphyrus, " that Rome has 

been for so many years ravaged by the 

plague ? Esculapius and the other gods 

have left it ; for, since Jesus is adored, 

no one obtains any more the public 

assistance of the gods." ''And when/' 

remarks the learned author of Paganism^ 

lis Origin, its History, "when, is this 
4 



74 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



complaint lieard? In the third century, 
in all the fire of persecution, under the 
rule of the Pagan Cesars, priests, and 
gods, when no human power could en- 
chain the divinities of Olympus nor close 
the mouth of the oracles." 

In this great conflict of the infant 
Church, it must be understood that men, 
on either side, did not struggle alone ; 
Christ and His faithful angels assisted 
the martyrs, Satan and his angels multi- 
plied their speUs to complete the blind- 
ness of the executioners. The cessation 
of the oracles, and the public confessions 
to which the Christians forced the devils, 
were amongst the principal means of the 
siipernaturol triumph of the Cross. 

Xow-a-days the oracles of fortune-tel- 
lers, dairvoyantts, and table-turners have 
little pubhc renown : governments do not 
submit to them questions of peace or 
war ; but let the Christian faith grow 
weak or die out, and we shall again see 
the davs when the nations took for theii 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



75 



guides tlie demons of Del23lii, of Dodona, 
and Prenesta. Rationalistic pride is 
soon at an end ; liumanity feels the 
want of a superior guidance ; take from 
it the Gospel and the Church, and it will 
to-morrow question the devils. Either 
Divine faith, or diabolical superstitions. 

XIII. 

IS THE DEVIL A DOCTOE ? 

If, to make a physician, these three 
things were required : learning, skill, 
devotion — Satan never was a doctor. 
We do not dispute his learning and skill, 
but he absolutely lacks devotion. 

Nevertheless, that deceitful master, 
knowing the value that men set on 
health, and their dishke of suffering and 
death, contrived, in all ages, to pass him- 
self off as a potent and generous healer. 
The ancients, even to Hippocrates, knew 
no other physicians than the Pagan 
priests, who ascribed to their knowledge 



76 



BOES THE DE^T:L EXIST, 



a snperliuman origin, and to tlieir medi- 
caments a snperliuman virtue. The cre- 
ation of natural medicine no wise discon- 
certed them, and magic remedies are in 
use even in our own days. 

There are five distinct sorts of reme- 
dies that may be emploj'ed agamst a 
disease : 1. Natural remedies, prepared 
by medical art, and to which recourse is 
habitually had. 2. Remedies the prepara- 
tion of whicJi is the secret of a family or 
an indiyidual, but in the composition of 
which superstition has no share : re- 
course may be had to such when expe- 
rience has proved them not unsafe. Still 
it is wise to consult a medical man, 
because a medicine that suited one sick 
person might be injurious to another. 
3. Supernatural remedies of the right 
kind, such as the invocation of the 
friends of God, the application of their 
relics, pilgrimages to then- tomb ; pro- 
vided one does not believe that these 
acts will produce, necessarily, and of 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



77 



tliemselyes, the cure. Even though the 
confidence of the pilgrims were false, 
they would in no wise sin ; for what they 
do, they do to obtain from Almighty 
God, through the intercession of a saint, 
that he may grant the cure; 4. Supersti- 
tioics remedies, in the making up, and use 
of which are introduced either the direct 
invocation of the Devil, or fantastic cer- 
emonies, a sort of sacramental formula 
of magic, or the prayers of the Church 
employed otherwise than the Church 
prescribes,, and thereby profaned. 5. 
Finally, pretended super stitioits remedies, 
sold as such by false sorcerers to the 
fools whom they can cheat. As these 
false sorcerers have, 'usually, no medi- 
cal knowledge, their drugs, which never 
cure, almost always aggravate the dis- 
ease, if they do not kill the patient. 

Large allowance being made for quack- 
erj^ we may acknowledge, with St. Au- 
gustine and other illustrious personages 
that, in certain cases, cures are effected 



78 DOES THE DEYEL EXIST, 



by diabolical agency. In the opinion of 
several Fatliers, the deyils usually confine 
themselves to removing causes of suffer- 
ing to which they themselves gave rise. 

They Avound," says Tertullian, they 
cease to wound, people think they have 
cured!" However that may be, it is 
always a crime to have recourse to the 
enemy of God to get rid of a cross which 
His providence imposes ; and, without 
speaking of the risk, serious as it is, of 
being tricked by a swindler whose drugs 
may endanger life itself, it is always a 
double folly : first, because God, being 
ever the strongest, may well strike us, in 
spite of the assistance of the Devil, sac- 
rilegiously invoked; second, because the 
Devil, who hates us, will make us pay 
very clear for his consultations and the 
momentary rehef his power may have 
procured. 

If you are sick, call in a regular physi- 
cian, and pray God to make the remedies 
he prescribes efiicacious. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 79 



XIV. 

ON THE PRESENT COMMUNICATIONS WITH 
EYIL SPIRITS, OR SPIRITUALISM. 

In tlie latter years of tlie eighteenth 
century, a period of scoffing incredulity 
which affected to believe " neither in God 
nor Devil," there appeared a certain Mes- 
mer, who, 'by means of certain passes, 
plunged people into a sleep, accompanied 
by very singular circumstances. To the 
German physician Mesmer, succeeded 
the Italian swindler Balsamo, styled, in 
France, Count de Cagliostro, or the divine 
Cagliostro, for that adventurer, after de- 
camping in all haste from Eome, where 
the galleys awaited him, infatuated the 
philosophical society of Paris to a degree 
that exceeds all belief. " His hair,^' says 
Bresciani, " was encased in precious jew- 
els ; people kept, as a treasure, a pinch 
of his toilet powder ; his portraits were 
everywhere ; Cagliostro was painted un 



80 



DOES THE DE^^L EXIST, 



fans, and stamped on liandkerciiiefs ; lie 
^yas cast in bronze, and statues were 
raised to him as to a tutelary god." But 
what ! Balsamo, finding the forging of 
notes insufficient for his activity, was, 
moreover, Grand Master of Egyptian 
Freemasomy, and heir of Mesmer's 
science. His somnambulists brought, 
before wondering materialists, the for- 
gotten spells of ancient magic ; like the 
priestesses of Delphi, they announced 
the future, told what was passing in dis- 
tant places, and, at certain moments, 
gave proof of marvellous science. . In 
the lodges, Caghostro, the Grand Copt, 
introduced a little girl of some ten years 
old, clad in white, vritli a blue girdle and 
a red ribbon crosswise. He called her 
pupil, or dove, placed • her before a 
decanter filled with water, and breathed 
on her face. Then the child, looking 
through the decanter, saw wonderful 
sights, of which she gave a description. 
If the "dove" had been alone in the pos- 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



81 



session of this second sigiit, one might 
have treated it all as mere jugglery ; but 
CagUostro communicated this faculty to 
a whole crowd of people. It w^as hydro- 
mancTf, renewed from the Gnostics and 
Manich8eans, who themselves had it from 
the Deyil-worshippers of still earlier 
times. Cagliostro was implicated in the 
famous necklace" trial. He found mi^ans 
to have himself acquitted, but haying 
had the audacity to return to Eome in 
1783, he was there arrested, and con- 
demned to perpetual imprisonment, in 
which he died, miserably. But he had 
made over a million of adepts, amongst 
whom were found honest people and 
even Catholics, who took Animal Magne- 
tism seriously, and continued its prac- 
tices, without knowing them essentially. 

Attentive and judicious observers, see- 
ing Animal Magnetism produce phenom- 
ena superior to the physical and mental 
strength of the persons magnetized, sus- 
pected diabolical agency. They were 



82 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



laughed at, and people went on, either 
denying troublesome facts, or setting 
forth laws of nature yet unknown. But 
behold, for full a quarter of a century, 
Magnetism is outdone by a new order of 
facts, wherein the agency of intelligent 
forces, that is to say, spirits, becomes 
more and more evident. In 1846, raps 
were heard by night in the chamber 
of two young American women, the 
Misses Fox, of Rochester, New York. 
By means of signs agreed upon, they put 
themselves in communication with the 
rapping spirit. In the twinkling of an 
eye, public attention is arrested ; in 
every city of the Union, people practice 
spiritual ielegraphy with invisible beings 
wdio willingly enter into it. Soon, Spirit- 
ualism crosses the ocean and lands in 
Europe. Like its forerunner. Magne- 
tism, it modestly begins with phenom- 
ena simple enough, which do not imme- 
diately oblige people to acknowledge a 
superhuman power. Under the pressure 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



83 



of the ncgers, tables move. Not much 
of a prodigy this ! The least lesson in 
physics presents sights very exclusively 
natural and much more surprising. But 
wait a while. Public curiosity once ex- 
cited, the enchanted furniture displays 
more knowledge ; it gives those who 
question it very precise answers ; table 
feet, daily more agile, move pencils that 
make drawings, write whole pages, reveal 
the greatest secrets,'"' and, finally, preach 
philosophy and religion. Thousands of 

* Here is one fact, amongst a hundred others, the 
authenticity of which we can certify : At a sitting of 
spiritists, a pencil writes a letter to a person unknown 
to those present, but whose address it gives. Next 
day, one of the spiritists brings tlie letter to the 
address marked. The person named was found there. 
The paper was handed to liim ; he turns pale ; the 
writing was unmistakably that of his father, some 
time dead. But when he had finished reading it, he 
was in a frightful state. The letter contained a- 
severe reproach for the little care he had taken to 
keep the promise made to liis dying father, Avlien 
none but they themselves were present, to pay a debt 
contracted by the latter! 



84 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 

persons are witness to these facts, a 
great number are duped ; the whole 
world is stiiTed; the devils enter into 
habitual communication with the impious 
or the imprudent, by whom they are 
invoked ; a new and fearful evolution of 
magic begins. 

Attention! Hitherto all that spirit 
magic shows us appears futile ; but it 
is a beginning. Curious experiences are 
succeeded by preachings. ConJ&dence 
once gained, the spirits can lead their 
credulous hearers far, very far. To 
galvanic vibrations (wrote M. de Mirville 
in 1854, in reference to America) ser- 
mons have succeeded, then doctrines, 
then all the mystical societies, then clubs 
by hundreds, then a frantic socialism, 
then a vigorous attack on all rehgious 
laws ; and although there is, amongst 
us, as yet only question of walking tables 
and hats, who knows but, in a few years, 
we shall contemplate the wrecks of their 
passage?'* 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



85 



XV. 

BOME TEEY WOKTHY MEN BELIEVE IN THE 
AGENCY OE GOOD SPIRITS ; ARE THEY IN 
ERROR? 

Most certainly tliey are. Let us first 
speak of good spirits. "What leads to 
tlie belief in their agency, are disclosures 
of a religions character, moral advice, 
exhortations to do well, proceeding from 
invisible -speakers. People do not pause 
to remark that the conduct of these 
spirits is precisely the habitual conduct 
of heretics and revolutionaries. To 
insinuate themselves into the minds of 
honest people, disturbers loudly give out 
great principles of morality, of* honor, 
of charity ; they cunningly represent tlie 
men or the institutions they seek to over- 
throw as hostile to these principles, and 
thus produce Fx^naticism, which is noth- 
ing else than generosity of sentiment placed 
at the service of an error. 



86 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



If the evil spirits preached only truth 
and virtue, they would be doing our busi- 
ness and not their own ; if they preached 
only error and vice, they would horrify 
any one not totally depraved and cor- 
rupt. Their skill consists in wrapping 
up the poison in the sugar-plum. Yes, 
the modern sphits in case of need extol 
the Gospel, like Jean Jacques; justice, 
like Proudlion ; purity of heart, like 
George Sand ; and even Cathohcism, 
Hke M. Eenan. Thereupon, honest 
souls, too loyal to beheye in perfidy, 
and, on the other hand, sufficiently well 
satisfied, unhiown to themselves, to meet 
a religion entirely new, much less fiight- 
ful in its threats and much more accom- 
modating in its morality than old Cath- 
ohcity, give those spirits a confidence 
which may lead to the abyss. We, 
therefore, beseech these honest and up- 
risfht souls to meditate well on the fol- 
lowing observations : 

1. In the most remote times, the devils 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



87 



made use of practices just tlie same as 
tliose we now witness, to accredit tlie 
most monstrous errors, and the most 
infamous 'practices. Those oracles of 
Paganism who demanded, now human 
sacrifices, now the most frightful out- 
rages on modesty, had for organs objects 
which moved of themselves, 'tables," ssljs 
TertuUian, letters which mysteriously 
formed themselves into lines, noises, and 
intelligible answers going forth from 
wood and stone." Even now, the idola- 
ters of the barbarian world communicate 
in this way with the wicked spirits who 
help them in their senseless and cruel 
customs. The African of Dahomey con- 
sults his calabash as the Paris spiritist 
consults his table, and he receives abom- 
inable orders, which he executes with a 
terrible docility. 

2. The good angels, also, have placed 
themselves iu communication with man, 
but in other conditions. It was usually 
under the human form, sometimes under 



88 



DOES THE DETTL EXIST, 



a symbolical form ; amongst tlie Jevrs, hy 
a special favor, tliey answered in the 
name of God, when interrogated by the 
priest in the holy place ; but neyer did 
those princes of the heavenly court place 
themselves in dependence on man, to 
come, at a call, and prattle, like gossips, 
vvith Peter and Paul, or whoever takes a 
notion to satisfy his curiosity. Above 
all, never were they seen to mingle v>irli 
the demons, to converse in the same 
places and by the same "mediums" with 
all comers. 

3. These pretended revealers of a more 
perfect rehgion have no understanding 
aaiongst themselves. The twelve Apos- 
tles, who founded the Catholic Church, 
and their countless successors, pro- 
claimed everywhere the same creed, and 
so the testimony of one is strengthened 
and confirmed by the testimony of all the 
others. When a priest to-day teaches 
Cathohc truth, two huncbed and fifty-nine 
popes, ninety thousand bishops, millions 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



89 



of priests, doctors, martyrs, saints, the 
learned, myriads of the faithful, the 
noblest portion of mankind, the most 
enlightened and virtuous for over eight- 
een hundred years, in one magnificent 
concert, teach with him. The distinctive 
sign of truth shines forth, Unity I But, 
behold, in one parlor, a table writes this, 
whilst in another chamber, not many 
yards distant, another table writes that. 
Is it that ignorant or lying spirits meet ? 
How is sincerity to be distinguished from 
imposture, in their language ? A table 
has told the truth to-day ; who knows if 
it will not lie to-morrow ? 

Protestantism has been irrevocably 
condemned before Reason by the unsta- 
bleness and incoherency of its doctrines. 
Bossuet crushed it by the irrefutable 
argument: ''You vary; therefore you 
are nqt the truth." Spiritism is no less 
fruitful in whims and changes : it varies ; 
tlierefore it is not the truth, 

4. Where the revelations of spiritism 



90 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



are least discordant, there is always to 
be found the open or ill-disguised nega- 
tion of the revelation given by the King 
of spirits, assisted by the spirits of light, 
amidst prodigies before which the paltiy 
tricks of our contemporary magic fade 
into nothing. Blind brethren, open, 
then, your eyes ! Your spirits move 
some pieces of furniture ; the Divine 
Eevealer commanded the sea, and at 
His vrord its waves grew calm. Your 
spirits make phantoms appear ; the Di- 
vine Eevealer raised the dead. Your 
spirits say they are able to cure some 
sick persons, without furnishing any very 
authentic proofs thereof; the Divine 
Revealer instantly healed crowds of the 
sick who were brought to Him from all 
parts. Your spirits make short-dated 
predictions, and are confounded by the 
event ; the Divine Eevealer foi'etold 
events the most distant and the most 
unlikely, and all were accomplished. 
The Divine Eevealer never deceived, nor 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



91 



was deceived ; your spirits every day — 
yourselves admit — are caught in the fact 
either of ignorance or falsehood. 

That a man, carried away by the im- 
petuosity of passion, preoccupied with 
business, wholly given up to the ambi- 
tion of advancing, or the desire of 
enriching himself, having' usually, more- 
over, but very inadequate religious in- 
struction, loses sight of evangelical truth, 
may be conceived. But to abandon 
Christian revelation, so well proved, 
that, in despite of the sacrifices it re- 
quires and the furious attacks it has 
undergone, it subsists and reigns still ; 
to attach one's self to the suspicious 
and confused revelations of spirits whose 
identity and sincerity it is impossible to 
establish,''^ is to offer the most violent 
outrage to reason. 

These spirits have their apostles of flesh and 
blood, apostles who are also fond of shrouding them- 
selves in mystery. The most active would seem to 
be Allan Kardec ; but what! that name of Allan 



92 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



5. The attitude of the reyealing spirits 
lacks the dignity which becomes good 
angels. As in the times of Paganism, 
their prodigies are juggler's tricks!^ in- 
complete prodigies, wherein weakness 
betrays itself side by side with strength, 
silly prodigies, more apt to gratify the 
yanity of those who perform, and the 
curiosity of those who see them, than to 
glorify God and sanctify souls ; prodigies 
which leave after them an impression, 
not of peace, but of trouble and dis- 
quietude. Their language is still more 
pitiful than their acts. Useless words, 
hazy but emphatic verbiage, often suf- 
ficiently INDECEXT, sudden transitions, 
which follow up edifying counsels by 
others of a very different kind. No, 
good spirits speak not thus. 

Kardec hides another, which profane I do not know. 
Another sells at a high price hool^s which he signs 
Eliplias Levi. He is supposed to he a certain Levit-e, 
who, having cast his soutane to the winds, hccanie a 
magician, for want of something better. Such are 
the apostles, the great initiators of spiritism. 



AND WHAT DOES RE DO? 93 

The language of the angels of light, 
like that of the Word made flesh, may 
be simple and popular, but it is always 
dignified. 

6. The tree is known by its fruits. 
What are the fruits of spiritism ? 

In the phjsical order : no serious and 
useful progress ; yain illusions, and, at 
the utmost, the equivocal and temporary 
relief of some infirmities ; on the other 
hand, all nervous diseases, and others 
which spring from an over-excited imagi- 
nation, and which, as we are about to 
show, end frequently in madness. 

In the intellectual order : a prop given 
to five or six errors, which, from age to 
age, rise up against Catholic dogmas ; 
a pale repetition, under an apocalyptic 
form, of sophisms which have grov/n 
stale in anti-religious journals. The 
spirits of falsehood say themselves what 
they made human voices say ; that is all. 

In the moral order : disasters, madness, 
suicide. In many a place, revelation:? 



94 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



more or less in accordance with truth 
sow dissensions in families. Insane asy- 
lums are fiUed luitJi spiritists, whom the 
spirits have put out of their mind. 

From 1820 to 1870, the number of 
lunatics has increased threefold. Of 
two hundred and fifty-five mad people in 
one asylum, fifty-four were victims of 
spiritism ! 

A disgust for life takes possession of 
the unfortunates who hold intercourse 
with him who was " a murderer from the 
beginning." At Tours, two old men 
made away with themselves ; at Lyons, 
a woman cut herself in both arms with a 
razor, inflicting incurable wounds. These 
sad occurrences are multiplied from day 
to day. Let those who have eyes to see, 
open them, before their bewitchment is 
complete and irremediable. 

The relations between the good angels 
and man produce no such doubts ; they 
increase his faith, his courage, and his 
peace. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 95 



XVI. 

SPIRITISM AND THE CALLING UP OE THE 
DEAD. 

When the spirits who put tables and 
such hke objects in motion are asked to 
indicate their name and quaUtj^, they 
very frequently declare themselves to be 
the soul of such and such a dead person, 
and if invoked under that name, they 
willingly answer. On this account it is 
that a numerous class of spiritualists 
deny the existence of pure spirits, good 
or bad, and replace them by the souls of 
the departed. 

We are far from denying the possibility 
of apparitions of the dead. The his- 
tory, even of Catholicity, presents exam- 
ples enough of such apparitions. St. 
Peter appears to Attila, and frightens 
him ; St. Aloysius Gonzagua appears to 
St. Catherine in the splendor of celestial 
glory ; the Blessed Germaine appears to 



96 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



the Lady of Beauregard, and cures lier ; 
St. Perpetua sees lier brother, Dinocra- 
tius, in the torments of purgatory, etc. 
Holy Scripture itself relates the appari- 
tion of Samuel to Saul, that of Onias 
and Jeremiah to Judas Maccabeus, that 
of the Crucified to Paul, on the road to 
Damascus. 

Evocation is not even condemned if it 
be inspired by God, and effected in His 
name. The Roman Breviary relates a 
memorable example thereof, on the day 
of the 7th of May, feast of St. Stanis- 
laus, bishop. ' ■ 

Poland had for her king Boleslaus, 
whom the saint, a new John the Baptist, 
had deeply offended, by publicly re- 
proving his notorious misconduct. The 
prince, in a solemn assembly of the king- 
dom, cited the bishop before him, as 
the wrongful possessor of a small farm, 
bought in the name of his Church. The 
title deeds were wanting; the witnesses 
did not dare to speak. Stanislaus prom- 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 97 

ises that, in three clays, he will bring 
Peter, the original owner of the farm, 
who was dead three years. The promise 
is greeted with laughter (as it would be 
now ;) but the man of God, after three 
days of fasting and prayer, orders Peter 
to rise from his sepulchre. The latter 
comes to life again, follows the bishop to 
court, and before the king and his terror- 
stricken courtiers, declares that he really 
sold his field to the bishop, and was 
by him paid the price thereof; he then 
slept again in the Lord. 

Relations between this world and the 
world beyond the tomb are not impos- 
sible; but the illusion of the sx-)iritists 
consists in persuading themselyes that by 
means of certain formula the barrier 
which has hitherto separated them can 
be broken down. This error dates from 
the highest antiquity. It is noticed b}' 
St. Augustine in these terms : " Those 
spirits are deceivers, not by nature, but 
by malice. They make themselves gods 



98 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 

and sovls of tl.e dejyj.rttd. but they do not 
make themselves devils, for they really 
are so."' ^f^tii of God, X. n."- 

A learned physician of the sixteenth 
century. John Wier,. made, in his turn, 
the fc'ilowing reflections : 

" Think not that it is very hard for the 

Devil to represent falsely the figure of 

disembodied spirits, and to rrighten, by 

apparitions, the heu^s of the deceased 

and others ; this is done in order to force 

the simtde. and those vho have little 
J. 

trust in God to do imlavrful services, 
under the shadow of reh.gion, according 
to the form thereof imposed upon them. 
He also tries to confound those vho are 
firm in the faith, and takes every means 
of shaking them : to emich, by promises, 
the desperate, the credulous, the foohsh, 
to destroy those whom he allures by the 
hope of a rich inheritance, and to tor- 
iLient them by the fear of ill fortune."' 
{Imposture of t/co Droils. ' 

Undoubtedly the supposed dead bring 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 99 

pretended proofs of their ideniitj, but 
these proofs are no wise conclusive. 
They remind you of peculiarities which 
the dead and you alone knew ; the mys- 
terious pencil imitates his writing : all 
that may be. But the devils were in- 
visible witnesses of those peculiarities ; 
doubtless they can skilfully counterfeit 
handwriting, they who work prodigies 
much more extraordinary. And they 
know enough of the human heart to 
know that in persuading you a beloved 
one is there conversing with you, they 
will secure a better hearing, when, with 
pretended simplicity, they boldly declare 
that Catholic teaching is deceptive. 
These invisible interlocutors take the 
most august names, such as that of St. 
Louis, and even of St. Paul ; and under 
these names they contradict the faith of 
St. Louis and the teachings of St. Paul, 
and repeat, like parrots, the humanita- 
rian phrases of our modern philosophers. 
But history shows that there have been 



100 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



authentic apparitions of tlie glorious 
dead, attested by miracles ; not one of 
them declared that he was mistaken 
when he believed and taught Catholic 
dogmas during his mortal Hfe. What 
matters it, then, that these late comers, 
vv^ho, taking at random the names of our 
Saints and those of the heroes of free 
thought, emphatically proclaim some er- 
rors resuscitated before them by a dozen 
scribblers notoriously unbelieving ? 

To conjure up the pretended souls of 
the departed is an old Pagan practice 
that was punished with death in the legis- 
lation dictated by God to Moses. Had 
it been the will of Providence to author- 
ize this intercourse with the world be- 
yond the - grave, it would have, assuredly, 
determined the conditions thereof, man- 
kind would have known them, and not 
have been reduced to these suspicious 
and unwarranted manoeuvres, which can 
only give our souls doubt, trouble, and 
the most terrible agitation. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



101 



XVII. 

SOME GOOD CHRISTIANS THINK THEY CAN 
MAKE TABLES SPEAK, THE CHURCH NOT 
HAYING YET DECIDED THEREON. 

Christians wlio are ignorant or pre- 
sumptuous even to obstinacy, yes, ; excel- 
lent Christians, assuredly not. 

There are now-a-days Christians of 
many kinds : sincere Catholics who deny 
what the Church affirms, respectful Cath- 
olics who ridicule what the Church hon- 
ors, submissive Catholics who do what 
the Church forbids, and not what she 
commands. We have met with a distin- 
guished mathematician who declared him- 
self more a Catholic than ourselves, yet 
did not even , believe in the personal ex- 
istence of God ! 

Undoubtedly, men who are reputed 
good Catholics communicate needlessly 
with the spirits. But are not men seen 
to fall into faults of pride, of avarice, of 



102 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



sensuality, of hatred, of sloth, deceiving 
the priest who admits them to the sacra- 
ments, or deceiving themselves? Great 
God! if we permit ourselves all that 
such or such a one, who is not avowedly 
irreligious, permits himself, whither shall 
we go ? 

The Church, which has formally con- 
demned all voluntary communications 
vrith the devils, has not as yet pronounced, 
we acknowledge, on the form icMcli magic 
assumes noic-a-days, one of those solemn 
decisions, which, after long and patient 
researches on the nature of observed 
facts, at length pubhcly condemns them ; 
but the Church has not remained silent. 
A great number of bishops have spoken. 
In France, in Canada, and other coun- 
tries, eminent prelates have prohibited 
all communication with sphits or sj)irit- 
ualists. Priests renowned for their learn- 
ing and their eloquence, such as Padre 
Ventura, Pere de Eavignan, Pere Lacor- 
diare, energetically opposed this ne^' 



AM) WHAT DOES HE DO? 103 

form of sorcery. It would be difficult 
for us to give an exact list of the prelates 
who have condemned spiritism. . . . But 
where, in a rehgious question, immedi- 
ateiy practical, no pontiff lias approved, 
many formally condemned, the Christian 
who dares to meddle with it is guilty of 
the most evident temerity. 

Furthermore, Rome has not ignored 
these strange manifestations ; she quickly 
perceived their dangerous character ; the 
Eternal City knows perfectly well that 
Pius IX, without having as yet fulmi- 
nated a pubKc anathema, strongly con- 
demns the practices of spiritism, and en- 
courages the bishops who condemn, and 
the writers v/ho oppose it. 

In the fifth century, St. Augustine, one 
of the greatest geniuses the world has 
ever seen, wrote, in the immortal book 
of the ^^Confessions:" *^Many people, 
desirous of returning to Thee, O Lord, 
and being unable of themselves, have 
recourse to pure spirits, and, falling into 



104 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



the desire of curious yisions, deseryecl to 
become the sport of illusions. Being 
prond, they sought - Thee, swelling out, 
rather than striking their breast, and 
then they found, in the ways of pride, 
those Powers of the air who were to de- 
ceive them by the employment of their 
magic power. The Deyil transformed 
himself into an angel of light. That 
false mediator, . whom the secret judg- 
ments of G-od permits to seduce the 
proud, has sin in common with man ; not 
being clothed in a mortal body, he would 
fain appear eternal, like God ; but the 
true Mediator, whom the humble know 
well how to recognize, is Jesus Christ, 
mortal with men, just with God.'* (X, 
42, 43.) 

Jesus Christ, the true Mediator, the 
Divine Kevealer, founded the Church, to 
which He said : " He that heareth you^ 
heareth me." Now, whoever hears the 
Church cannot hear the revelations of 
spiritism. Either Catholic, with sixty 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 105 

generations of saints, or spiritist, with 
some enthusiasts of yesterday, those con- 
cerned have to choose. The two doc- 
trines are, moreover, on the gravest 
points, m evident contradiction ; if spirit- 
ism w^ere right, the Church would have^ 
to disappear, and the fate of mankind 
would remain at the mercy of a troop 
of those invisible and unknown goblins 
whose language is more confused than 
that of Babel ! Marvellous progress ! 

XVIIL 

IS IT, THEN, A GEEAT FAULT TO CONVERSE 
WITH THE SPIRITS, PROVIDED ONE DOES 
NOT GIVE UP THEIR FAITH? 

Most certainly. 

The conversation of the wicked, be 
they who they may, is full of danger. 
I^ecessity or charity alone excuse it. 
*'Tell me what company you frequent, 
and I will tell you who you are." You 
are the father of a family ; your child is 



106 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



good, candid, amiable, yirtnons. Some 
one proposes to you to introduce him 
amongst young people, wlio are well in- 
structed and very clever, fit to make their 
vray and help him in after days to make 
his, but spoiled to the marrow of their 
bones ; will you throw him into the so- 
ciety of such companions? The more 
graceful their manners are, the more, 
agreeable their conversation, the more 
amiable they appear, the more they are 
to be feared. Truly, the assurance of 
men now -a- days is something astound- 
ing ! One would think they were all 
inaccessible to seduction, to error; they 
seem to have received a diploma of moral 
and intellectual infallibility ! "What ! you 
imao'ine that vou can converse unscathed 
wdth that old deceiver, who has on his 
side, together with the enormous superi- 
ority of his intelligence, and sixty centu- 
ries of reflection and experience, the 
bewilderment you will naturally feel in 
entering, alone^ upon an unknown vv'oild 



AND WHAT DOE^ HE DO? 107 

to which he will guide you ! He who un- 
necessarily opens a bad book deserves to 
be blinded hj it. What would be the 
blindness of him who, in spite of the 
warnings which God giyes hini by His 
Church, would converse with the spirit 
who dictates or inspires all bad books ? 

Be candid. "What do you wish to learn 
of these spirits? Things that God con- 
ceals from you, the secrets of the unseen 
world, or of the future. You ask of your 
tables and your pencils all that supersti- 
tion asked of magic in all ages. You 
consider it a very simple thing to ask a 
rebel treacherously to give up to you 
your sovereign's secret. You, perchance, 
even ask him for help and succor in esca- 
ping the Divine will. And do you not 
fear that your sacrilegious curiosity ma}^ 
be answered by falsehood? You make 
the unfaithful servant chatter, because 
the master is silent, or speaks in a way 
that is distasteful to your self-indulgence, 
and you think all that innocent, and free 



108 



DOES THE DETIL EXIST, 



from clanger ! It is only fun, you say I 
Tery good ; but do you suppose that the 
proud enemy of mankind, -whose envy 
has been the cause of all our yroes, would 
lend himself to your vrhims, like an obe- 
dient dog, if he expected to gain nothing 
by his compkacency ? Listening to him, 
you gradually become his disciple ; he 
chooses, indeed, to be your slaye for a 
time, because from slave he Trill insen- 
sibly make himself master. 

These experiments are rery amusing, 
you will say. I answer you, with St. 
Peter Chrysologus : " He who pretends 
to amuse himself with the De^-il shall 
not rejoice with Christ." All that amuses 
is not allowable. Certain romances are 
very interesting, very piquant, very divert- 
ing ; and yet, if you read them, you will 
kill your soul. 

Let the priest, in the exercise of his 
Divine functions, let particular men, T\ith 
the charitable end of opening the eyes 
of their blinded brethren, interrogate the 



AKD WHAT DOES HE DO? 



109 



cl evils and answer tliem ; tliey have grave 
reasons for so doing, and they may count 
on the protection of Providence. But 
they know how unhealthy is the diaboli- 
cal atmosphere, and the two men, as 
learned as they are devoted, to whom we 
are indebted for the most learned re- 
searches on these subjects, Mr. de Mir- 
ville and Mr. G. Desmousseaux, no longer 
assist at these diabolical operations, be- 
cause, being sufficiently informed, they 
rightly consider that mere curiosity does 
not justify the presence of a Christian at 
time meetings, 

St. Paul, writing to the early faithful, 
forbade them to eat the meats sacrificed 
to idols, because those meats had been 
consecrated to the devils. You cannot 
be partakers of the table of the Lord 
and of the table of the devils." (I Cor., 
X, 21.) To converse with the devils is a. 
far graver thing than to eat meats which 
were offered to them. To those who im- 
prudently question them apply,, therefore, 

6 



110 



DOES THE DETEL EXIST, 



tlie sayiEg of the Apostle : ''I would not 
tliat you sliould be made partakers with 
deyils. Do we proToke the Lord to jeal- 
ousy? Ai'e we stronger than He?" (1 
Cor., X, 20, 22.) 

XIX. 

WHAT DIFEEEEXCE IS THEEE BETWEEN MAG- 
NETIC CLAIETOYANCE AND SPIEITISM ? 

Xone, at bottom ; only, in magnetism, 
the Deyil first hid his object under cover 
of certain phenomena which might be pro- 
duced by causes purely physical. There 
have been, and still are, men who prac- 
tice magnetism in good faith. They are^ 
without knowing it, the co-operators of 
the arch enemy. The Deyil serves them 
gratis, because that is his own affau', and 
attracts an audience whom he will turn 
to account. Innocent children become, 
as ill spiritism, his instruments, just as 
ihej sometimes are the instruments of 
wicked men whose evil designs they 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? Ill 



anwittingly execute. The most famous 
magnetizers now acknowledge tlie super- 
human agency of the spirits in magnetic 
prodigies. 

Let us hear Baron du Potet rehite how 
it came to pass that, while wanting only 
to be a magnetizer, he became a magi- 
cian : 

Does not history preserve for us the 
sad example of what befel past genera- 
tions in regard to sorcery? The facts 
were but too real. . . . But how did I 
find that art? By producing, under my 
eye^, at first without my seeking them, 
undoubted facts of sorcery. . . . 

''And, in fact, what is the magnetic 
sleep ? A result of magic power. And 
what determines those attractions, those 
sudden inclinations, those fits of fury, 
those dislikes, those crises, those convul- 
sions, which may be rendered permanent, 
if it be not the very principle employed, 
the agency most certainly known by the 
men of the past? That which you call 



112 DOES THE DETIL EXIST, 



nervous, or magnetic fluid, the ancients 
called occult poiver, , . . 

I liave felt the attacks of that terrible 
power ; one day, that evoked force, cm- 
other would say (and say v^'ell) that te- 
3I0X, agitated my whole being. . . . The 
bond was made, the compact wa.s con- 
cluded, an occult power was mingled with 
the force proper to myself. . . 

The celebrated Eegazzoni delivered, by 
his passes, an officer who, magnetized 
hj vengeance and fi'om afar, (that is to 
say, the victim of diabolical possession.) 
vras suffering cruelly. M. Desmousseaux 
asked him how he managed to do it. I 
discharge the magnetic fluid." " I know ; 
but after that?" ^'Xttev that, I mvoke 
benign spirits, in order to drive away the 
evil spirits." These prodigies, in fact, 
always produced by some magical sign, 
at least originally ; habitually accepted, 
at least once, by the person magnetized, 
suppose the intervention of axothee, as 
often as there is, as in second sight, not 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 113 

only augmentation of tlie power of our 
organs, but effect obtained without tlie 
agency of the cause which should, natu- 
rally, produce it. Under the influence 
of certain nervous excitements, our or- 
gans become more acute, and the ear, for 
instance, perceives imperceptible sounds ; 
but the eye sees not through an opaque 
body. If the magnetised person sees not 
only through a v/all, but through a num- 
ber of interposing bodies, objects placed 
at a distance, it is that anothek slioivs 
him what he sees. In like manner, if the 
magnetised person tells that which he 
did not know, that which he had not 
learned, that which he himself shall not 
know after the magnetic coma, it is that 
ANOTHER, who does know, comes, during 
the coma, to speak by his mouth. 

Magnetism, like spiritism, boasted of 
being the benefactor of humanity ; it is 
only its plague. If it has cured, or ap- 
peared to cure some diseases, it has, on 
the other hand, disturbed, seduced, led 



114 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



astray multitudes of unhappy people ; it 
has, by the despotic power it gives the 
magnetiser over his Toluntary yictim, even 
out of the coma, produced monstrous 
moral disorders. In fine, as testified by 
the princes of that black art, it also gives 
a disgust of hfe, and has even led, more 
than once, to suicide. 

Let us hear the grave warnings of the 
Encyclical, pubhshed on the 4th of Au- 
gust, 1858, by Cardinal Macchi, by order 
of Pius IX : " The perversity of men has 
come to that degree, that, neglecting the 
lawful study of science, to give them- 
selves up to mere curiosity, to the great 
luin of souls and the great detriment of 
civil society itself, they glorj^ in having 
discovered a new principle of magic and 
of divination, [Jiariolandi divinandique 
prindpium,'] Thus, then, thanks to the 
influence of mesmerism and of clairvoy' 
ance, as they say, silly women, excited by 
'passes' which are not always conform- 
able to the laws of decency, make them- 



AND WHxiT DOES HE DO? 



115 



selves stroDg to see tlie invisible, to dis- 
course on religion itself, to conjure up 
the souls of the dead, to receive ansvvws, 
to find out things hidden and distant ; 
they have the rash audacity to practise 
these and other acts of superstition, 
bringing thus a considerable profit to 
themselves and their masters/^^ In all 
that, whatever be their art or their im- 
posture, as physical means are found 
applied to bring about effects which are 
not natural ; there is a deception wholly 
unlawful and tinctured with heresy, and 
at the same time a scandal against pro- 
priety and good morals.'^ 

Magnetism, like spiritism, usually be- 
comes fatal, even in this world, to those 
who practise it. About the year 1843, 
China witnessed a recrudescence of the 
old custom of corresponding with spirits, 
nearly as it is done in Europe at the 

Clearly alluding to that young girl possessed of n 
divining spirit, who was exorcised by the Apostle St. 
Paul. 



116 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



present day ; but that did not last long, 
because Chinese good sense remarked 
that much evil came of it, and nevei 
the least good." {^Overland China Mcvil, 
quoted by M. Desmousseaux.) 

A warning to some Catholics who still 
think that mesmerism is harmless and 
even beneficial ; a warning, too, to those 
who consult clairvoyantes or mesmerisers. 



XX. 

IS THE DEYEL THE HEAD OF SECEET SO.CI- 
ETIES ? 

Scathing question ! For many ages 
there have been underground associations 
whose members, clandestinely combined, 
bound by oaths, submissive to an occult 
direction, have been on various occasions, 
excommunicated by the Sovereign Pon- 
tiifs. (Constitutions of Clement XII, 
Benedict XIV, Pius VII.) It is entirely 
aseless to demonstrate the Satanic nature 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 117 

of these societies to those who are evei 
so Utile acquainted with them ; but it is 
very necessary to open the eyes of honest 
people who have become thek dupes, or 
are in danger of becoming so. 

" Our final end," WTote one of the high 
dignitaries of that gloomy empire, in 
1819, "our final end is that of Voltaire 
and the French devolution, the anni- 
hilation of Catholicity, and even of the 
Christian idea, for ever." This, then, is 
their object. Another will give a sketch 
of the • proceedings : "It is decided in 
our councils that we want no more Chris- 
tians. Let us make no martyrs, but 
make vice popular amongst the masses. 
Let them breathe it through the five 
senses. Make hearts vicious, and you 
v/ill have no more Catholics!" If that 
be not diabolical language, what is ? 

Satan and his imps have a plan, the 
existence of which it is not hard to dis- 
cover, nor its development to follow : to 
hrectk up the society of tvlncJi the 3Ian- God 



118 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



is the Head, and to substitute for it a. so- 
ciety governed hy the prince of darhmssr 

* "We again borrow some significant details from au- 
thentic docmnents published by Cretinean-Jol}' : 

'•When joM have insinuated into some souls a dis- 
gust for the family and for religion — one goes almost 
always in the train of the other — let fall certain 
words that may incite the wish of being affiliated to 
the nearest Masonic lodge. ... To become member 
of a lodge, to feel one's self called to keep a secret 
never confided to you, is for certain natm*es a luxury and 
an ambition. . . . The lodges are a sort of depot 
which must be passed through in order to reach us ; 

. . . they form, unknown to the members, our pre- 
paratory novitiate, . . . Never throw off the mask ; 
prowl especially round the Catholic fold. ... In my 
opinion^ our young neophytes are too apt to make 
their Teligioiis hatred a political hatred. The conspi- 
racy against the Eoman See ought not to be con- 
founded with other projects. Let tis conqnre only agaiud 
Eome. ... In Paris, they will not understand that : 
but in London I have seen men who get hold of our 
plan better." (The Church and the Eevolution.) 

Thus you see the • gates of hell are trying to prevail 
against the City of God. Here are other words no 
less clear : "The great majority of the order not only 
do not admit Christianity, but opposes it with all its 
might." (Masonic Review, Januaiy, 1848.) '-Christi- 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 119 



This mystery of iniquity is partially ac- 
complished ; the Catholic Church is not 
crumbhng away, and will not crumble 
away ; but the infernal church is being 
formed and disciplined. It has hatred 
for its bond. It gives the first posts to 
those* who most hate Jesus Christ and 
His mystical body ; it swells its ranks 
from the indifferent themselves, because 
he who is not for Jesus Christ is against 
Him. Men who would neither kill, nor 
rob, alas ! men who go to Mass, and who, 
in spite of the repeated anatliema of the 
Holy See, approach the Holy Table, will 
declare to us upon their honor that they 
belong to a secret society, Preemasonry, 
for instance, and that there all rehgious 
opinions are respected, not excepting 
their own. Capital ! the Devil is an ex- 

anity is a horrible magic, the height of error, a mur- 
der/' (Memoir of the Masonic Jubilee of 1833.) 
And yet people are astonished when the Church de- 
clares that one cannot be a Freemason and a Chris- 
tian at the same time ! 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



perieiiced diplomatist. He asks of eacli 
only what tie can get. He will not way- 
lay the first comer at the street corner 
with a dagger or a murderous shell ; he 
will not set a hot-headed, but honest 
writer, to wage a daily war of calumn}^ 
on the Church. Each one has his own 
degree of degradation or imprudence. 
This one shall be an assassin ; that other 
a calumniator ; a third, an honest man 
duped, will serve, by clubbing with oth- 
ers, to hire the assassin and the calumni- 
ator, and, by his reputation for probity, 
give the association an appearance of 
honesty. But, in fine, eYOvj secret soci- 
ety (the secret agreement of an oppressed 
people to drive out an oppressive con- 
queror is not a secret society) is stamped 
v\ith the seal of Satan. 

1. The oath tctken therein is Satanic, 
Man may, and should, obey the orders of 
superiors who, in families, in the State, 
in the Church, are the depositaries of 
God's authority ; he has no right to divest 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



121 



himself of liis liberty in favor of a mere 
human power, to become the perpetual 
slave of unknown chiefs who may require 
of him indefinite acts, perhaps even di- 
rectly criminal, and consign him to the 
dagger if he refuse. That oath is radi- 
cally null, for man cannot validly bind 
himself to what is immoral. But it is 
always a great crime to sign that com- 
pact of slavery, incorporating the signer 
Avith the gloomy cohorts wdiose chief is 
the first rebel. 

2, Affiliation to those secret societies is cm 
evident revolt agcdnst regular social order ; 
the members of that underground empire 
uniting together only to substitute here 
below, by stratagem or by violence, for pro- 
vidential order that devised by their chief. 

3. Tlie right of life and death adjudged 
in those societies (and from time to tim^e 
exercised) is a usurpation of the right of 
God, communicated only to His lieuten- 
ants, that is to say, the visible conductors 
of nations; hence, it follows that those 



122 DOES THE DEYTL EXIST, 



who accept that savage right, do thereby 
virtually become assassins. 

Unknown brethren, who read these 
pages, in the name of your dignity as 
Christians and as men, fly these secret 
societies. The most peaceable of them, 
Freemasonry, has, even in our own day, 
driven from Portugal the daughters of 
Charity ; formed, in Belgium, associations 
for the extirpation of Christian habits ; 
and, in France, testified in a striking 
manner its hatred for the temporal sove- 
reignty of the Holy See, nov/ the essen- 
tial condition of the independence of the 
Church f what must be thought of the 
others ? Some writers state that, in the 
inner circles of some, Satan has been, and 
still is, directly and personally adored.t 
It is very natural that the occult sciences 

Since the above was written the temporal power 
has fallen beneath tlie persistent attacks of the secret 
societies. For how long, God only knows. (Traxs.) 

-j- The learned author of the "Jew of Yerona,'' 
Bresciani, states that he had certain proof of it 



! 

AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 123 

slionld be practiced in tlie darkness of 
occult societies ; what is certain, from all 
that has transpired of their machina- 
tions, and the solemn decisions of the 

Here is what the lamented Charles Sainte-Foi sub- 
stnntially relates, (Translation of Goerres' "Mystical," 
epilogue :) 

" Happenhig to be in one of the most important 
capitals of Europe, a clergyman, a friend of ours, 
made the acquaintance of a gentleman well versed in 
chemistry r.nd other natural sciences, little disposed, 
consequently, to prejudice or spiritual delusion, hav- 
ing, moreover, lived far from religion, and was con- 
verted only a little before. This gentleman had heard 
people speak of secret societies, in vrhich revolution- 
ary doctrines were combined with the practice of nec- 
romancy. (As in the Egyptian Freemasonry of Cag- 
liostro. . . .) Impelled by curiosity, he got himself 
admitted into one of these associations, each of which 
was. I believe, composed of twelve members, and 
whose meetings took place by night. He there wit- 
nessed some very extraordinary things. The initiated 
entered, hy means of magnetic somnambulism, into connection 
icith the dead, icho appeared to them and ansivered their ques- 
tions. On his return home, he wished to make liim- 
self sure that there had been no illusion or deceit, 
and tried to obtain the same results, by magnetising 
his son, about eleven or twelve years old. Having 



124 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



Ciiurch, is, that tliey are the instruments 
of the infernal powers in their struggle 
against Christ and His faithful people ; 
that they are the synagogue of Satan, the 
earthly armj' of anti-Christianity, hate- 
ful, hypocritical, murderous. The secret 
societies are the central focus of revolu- 
tion, and Eeyolution (said Pius IX, in 
his Encyclical of December 8, 1853) is 
INSPIRED BY Satan eimself. Its object is 
to destroy from top to bottom the edifice of 
Christianity, and to reconstruct on its 
ruins, tlie social order of Paganism.'' Pa- 
ganism, is the pubhc reign of the evil 
spuits substituted for that of God. 

put him to sleep, he conjured up the shade of his 
Avife, whom he had lost when that son was not quite 
two years old. The child, in his sleep, depicted his 
mother, and with a pencil drew on paper a ver)- good 
portrait of her features and her dress. Tlie priest, 
having consented to be magnetised, sees, in his turn, 
the wife of the magnetiser and several other dead 
persons. But on awaking, he felt himself in some 
way the slave of a foreign power, and feared a real 
possession. The gentleman, frightened at what had 
happened, set out for Bome." 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



125 



XXI. 

WHAT IS DIABOLICAL TEMPTATION? 

It is the effort made by tlie wicked 
spirits to incite each one of us to do evil. 
The word temptation signifies proof. To 
merit reward we must encounter trials. 
Two sorts of trials await us here below: 
first, temptation purely Imman^ such as the 
sight of beautiful fruit, which one is for- 
bidden to eat ; secondly, diabolical tempt- 
ation, which often brings on, usually in- 
creases, the other. 

The Devil attacks men in three waj^s : 
by suggestion, by snare, and by posses- 
sion. 

Suggestion is the most usual form of 
diabolical temptation. An inyisible ene- 
my comes upon us, he sows in our imagi- 
nation bad thoughts, he keeps them up, 
brings them back, in spite of our efforts 
to drive them away ; he excites and stirs 
up our senses themselves; we feel our- 



126 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



selves interiorly harassed, incited, drawn 
away ; it is like a discourse without 
words, but urgent and violent. It even 
happens that these detestable thoughts 
beset and pursue with still greater fury 
those who devote themselves to practices 
of piety ; pious persons often hear, even 
at the moment of death, and against 
their will, these troublesome thoughts. 
The most dangerous suggestions are those 
which adapt themselves to our tastes, fos- 
ter our inclinations, excuse our coward- 
ice, inflame our self-love, and turn us 
away, noiselessly and insensibly, from the 
right road. 

To the suggestion is joined the snare. 
External objects, and, above all, persons 
under his influence, the Devil makes use 
of as instruments to bring together a 
concurrence of circumstances which sud- 
denly seize upon the unwary Christian, 
and cast him into the abyss. An obsti- 
nate hunter, Satan knows how to foresee 
and await. "We can understand, from the 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 127 



history of Weisliaupt, the modern reno- 
vator of secret societies, and the terrible 
craft of the means which that wretch 
recommends for corrupting men insensi- 
bly, what must be the skill of the master 
of whom Weishaupt was but a mere dis- 
ciple. Nothing is more degrading than 
to make* one's self the servant of that 
murderer of souls, by helping him to lay 
his snares for them. Yet this is what is 
done by the authors of bad books, those 
who spread them, and those who lend 
them ; this is what is done by all those 
who voluntarily scandalize their neighbor. 

Possession belongs to a class of ex- 
traordinary facts which only happen by 
the special permission of God. Then 
the Devil, even without being called, 
shows himself under frightful forms ; he 
causes strange noises to be heard ; in a 
word, he tempts exteeioely. 

Who does not know the history of St. 
Anthony, related by St. Athanasius, one 
of the greatest geniuses that ever shed 



128 



DOES THE DE^IL EXIST, 



glory on mankind ? Wlien scarcely twen- 
ty years of age, Anthony, filled with a 
desire for perfection, had distributed his 
fortune to the poor, and retired to the 
desert to practice perfection. The de- 
mon there harassed him in every way. 
First, he incites in the mind of the young 
solitar}^ thoughts of regret, then the most 
w^earisome anxiety ; finally, Tiolent incite- 
ments to lust. 

Overcome by prayer and mortification, 
the Devil has recourse to means the most 
extraordinary ; first, frightful voices, then 
apparitions under the form of a shame- 
less woman. Being alw^ays repulsed, the 
infernal spirit tries to inspire his con- 
queror w^ith feelings of pride. He pre- 
sents himself under the form of a black 
dwarf, and tells him : " I have deceived 
many people, and have overthrown many 
great personages, but I confess myself 
vanquished by thee." 

After a while, the struggle began anew, 
fierce and terrible. Horrible forms of 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 129 



lions, bears, and serpents appeared with 
frightful noises ; the Saint was violently 
struck; but, all covered with bruises as 
he was, he invoked Our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and added a new triumph to those 
he had already gained. 

Although very rare in ordinary life, 
obsession is very frequent in the heroic 
life of the Saints. During a great part 
of his beautiful hfe, the Cure of Ars knew 
that trial. " Usually," says his biogra- 
phers, at midnight, three great blovvs 
on the outer door warned the Cure of 
Ars of the presence of his enemy. After 
having amused himself by raising a hor- 
rible clatter on the staircase, the Devil 
entered. . . . He betook himself to the 
bed-curtains, clutched them and shook 
them furiously. Often he cried out in a 
scoffing tone : ' Vianey, Vianey, eater of 
truffles, we shall have thee!' ... or else 
he drove nails into the floor. One day, 
the good Cure compared the tumultuous 
noise of the fiends to that of an army of 



130 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



Austrians, or said that tlie deviis liad 
held their parliament in his yard." 

These fierce attacks of the Devil were 
a hard cross for the holy priest ; he con- 
soled himself with the remark that each 
victory over the fiend was followed by a 
signal favor, or the conversion of some 
noted sinner. 

Persons of a nervous temperament and 
lively imagination imagine themselves 
haunted by the Devil, wdaen there is 
nothing of the kind. People should not 
believe in obsession without the most 
convincing proof. 

XXII. 

WHAT IS DIABOLICAL POSSESSION? 

It is a rough imitation, a sort of infer- 
nal parodj^ on the incarnation of the 
Word, permitted by Providence, in order 
to show wdiat w^ould one day become of 
man if he preferred the service of the 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 131 



Prince of Darkness to that of tlie King 
of Heaven. 

A possessed person is one whose body, 
and even, indirectly, his spiritual facul- 
ties (except the will, which never belongs 
to Satan, unless with its own consent) 
are given up for a time to one or more 
devils who make him their instrument. 

Possession was a known fact, and even 
of frequent occurrence prior to the com- 
ing of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who, du- 
ring the three years of His public life, 
delivered a multitude of the possessed. 
" He went about," says the Apostle Peter, 
"doing good and healing all that w^ere 
oppressed by the Devil." (Acts, x, 38.) 
The Chananeau fell at his feet, saying: 
" Have mercy on me, O Lord, for my 
daughter is grievously troubled by a 
devil." Jesus commands, and the fiend 
departs. (St. Matth., xv, 22.) St. Luke 
relates, in the eighth chapter of his gos- 
pel, a terrible and instructive instance of 
possession. Jesus met," says he^ "a 



132 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST^ 



certain man y\^1io had a cleyil now for a 
long time, and lie wore no clothes, nei- 
ther did he abide in a house, bnt in the 
tombs. And when he saw Jesus, he fell 
down before him, and crying out with a 
loud voice, he said : ' What have I to do 
with Thee, Jesus, Son of the Most High 
God? I beseech Thee, do not torment 
me.' " It is not the unhappy man v\"ho is 
possessed that speaks thus ; it is the 
Devil who speaks by his mouth. For," 
continues St. Luke, " He commanded the 
unclean spirit to go out of the man. For 
many times it seized him ; and he was 
bound with chains, and kept in fetters ; 
and he broke the bonds," by diabolical 
povrer, " and was driven by the devil into 
the deserts. And Jesus asked him, say- 
ing : ' What is thy name ? ' But he said : 
^Legion,' because many devils vvcre en- 
tered into him." Jesus having permitted 
these devils to enter into a herd of swine, 
caused the herd to precipitate itself into 
tlie sea. Even so Avould they fain drive 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



133 



tlie herd of the vrickecl into the sea of 
eternal woe ! But what becomes of this 
man who had so long been a furious 
lunatic? Dehvered from the devils, re- 
stored to himself, behold him sitting 
peacefully, covered with his garments, at 
the feet of his Liberator, and offering to 
follow Him everywhere. "Who knows 
exactly what part the Devil may play 
even now, in the strange and manifold 
infirmities which are known by the gen- 
eral name of insanity? Among those 
numerous victims of spiritism confined 
in lunatic asylums, may there not be 
some whom the exorcisms of the Church 
might cure ? M. de Hoys, a former pupil 
of the Polytechnic School, proposes this 
question before us ; the future will, per- 
haps, solve it. 

Possessions became gradually more 
rare as the kingdom of Christ extended 
its limits. They never entirely ceased, 
even in Christian countries. Every one 
knows the famous challenge of TertuUian 



134 . DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 

to the Pagans of his time : " Let a man 
who is known to be possessed by deyils, 
be brought before your tribunals ; let a 
Christian, no matter who he be, com- 
mand that spirit to speak; he will con- 
fess that he is truly a devil, and, more- 
over, that he falsely calls himself a God. 
Let them bring likewise one of those vvho 
believe themselves moved by a god, who, 
breathing strongly on the altars, have in- 
haled divinity with the air. ... If, not 
daring to lie to a Christian, they confess 
not that they are demons, shed, on the 
spot, the blood of that rash Christian." 
(Apolog., xxni.) St. Paulinus, in the 
Life of St. Felix of Nola, declares that 
he saw a possessed man walk right up 
the arch of a church, head downwards, 
without his clothes being disturbed, and 
this man was cured at the tomb of St. 
Felix. 

St. Jerome {Epitapli. Paitloe) relates 
numerous cases of possession. "At the 
tomb of St. John the Baptist, Paula was 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



135 



horrified to hear tlie roaring of devils. 
* Tlie possessed,' slie said, ' howled, 
barked, whistled. . . . Others turned 
head over heels on the ground. Women 
were held up in the air, head downward, 
and yet remained covered.' " 

The illustrious doctor, in his " Life of 
Sto Hilarion," relates that every day furi- 
ous pcnimals possessed by the demon were 
brought to the Saint. One day, there 
was brought to him an enormous camel 
which had killed several persons ; it was 
dragged along by more than thirty men, 
vrith great ropes; its eyes were blood- 
shot, its mouth frothing, its tongue swol- 
len and constantly moving ; its frightful 
roaring filled the air with a strange and 
dismal sound. Hilarion ordered him to 
be unbound. Those who had brought 
him thither refused; one only dared to 
obey, Hilarion advances, and says to 
the demon, "Whether thou art in a fox, 
or a camel, thou art always the same; 
thou dost not frighten me." Then, 



136 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



Iiolding out his hand, he stands firm, 
and the beast, who came as fierce as 
though he would have devoured him, 
falls immediately to the ground head 
foremost. 

Phernel, physician to Henri II, of 
France, and the famous Protestant sur- 
geon, Ambroise Pare, makes mention of 
a possessed person who spoke Greek and 
Latin without havins; learned either. The 
possession of Loudun, under Louis XIII, 
is authenticated by historical proof the 
most incontestible. More recently, an 
epidemic of possession broke forth in a 
Tillage of the Upper Alps, named Mor- 
zine, after some sphitual sittings, and. of 
all the remedies tried, exorcisms and pil- 
grimages were alone successful. 

The indications whereby possession is 
recognized are, according to Dr. Ferraris, 
the following : Speaking languages not 
previously learned ; having an instinctive 
horror for religious objects; throwing, 
themselves down precipices; possessing 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 137 

all at once a science not acquired before ; 
remaining so firmly fixed in the place 
where they are, that several persons 
could not move them from it ; suffering 
from the application of blessed objects, 
and relics, even when not aware of their 
presence ; ansvv^ermg an unspoken ques- 
tion, or obeying a command equally 
unspoken. (Magnetism producing the 
greater part of these effects, how can we 
but see that it is nothing else than tempo- 
rary possession ?) 

When these indications, or other simi- 
lar ones have, by their accumulation or 
repetition, proved that a man is moved 
by a superior, and, consequently, foreign 
force ; when, on the other hand, there is 
no reason to presume that these super- 
natural facts, wrought in him, come from 
God or His angels, efforts must be made 
for his deliverance by making use of the 
means which the Church, the depository 
of the power of Christ, has at her dis- 
posal. 



138 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



At the present time, pursuant to wise 
rules, the ordinary of the diocese alone 
decides as to whether there is cause for 
exorcism, and appoints the exorcist. 

XXIII. 

WHAT IS EXOTtCISM? 

Exorcism is a ceremony in which the 
ministers of the Church authoritatively 
command the devils to leave at liberty 
the persons of whose bodies they have 
taken possession, and to depart from 
other creatures whom those malignant 
spirits sometimes abuse, by God's per- 
mission, since they have been in some 
degree subjected to them by the loss man 
sustained, through his sin, of the empire 
he had over them." {Boman Ritual for 
the use of the Diocese of Bordeaux, 
inst. XI.) 

The Church exorcises, with prayers 
particularly solemn, the oil which is to 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



139 



be consecrated by the bishop on Holy 
Thursday, to be emploj-ed in the cere- 
monies of Baptism, Confirmation, Ex- 
treme Unction, and Holy Orders ; the 
holy water used in particular benedic- 
tions, and in conflict with the spirits of 
darkness ; the bodies of catechumens^ 
that is to say, of children or adults who, 
by baptism, are about to pass from the 
empire of Satan to that of Jesus Christ, 
and the bodies of the possessed, that is 
to say, those, into whom, even after bap- 
tism, (God ordaining it, for their punish- 
ment, or tolerating it to increase their 
merit,) the devils enter, or in some sort 
become incarnate- 

The order of Exorcist, the second of 
the minor orders, confers the radical 
poYv'er to make exorcisms ; but when there 
is question of possession, the bishops, in 
preference, appoint a priest invested with 
Dipore abundant grace. Almost alwaj'S, 
the evil spirits resist for some time, the 
commands of the exorcist, until at last, 



140 DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



overcome by a superior power, tliej pro- 
claim, by tlieir fligiit, the yictory of Jesus 
Christ. 

As regards the formula, it is varied 
according to the times. 

We find, in the Apostolical Constitu- 
tions, this adjuration : " O Thou who 
hast bound the strong arm and broken 
his Aveapons, ... Only Son of the Fa- 
ther, chastise these malignant spirits, and 
deliver from their torments the works of 
Thy hands.'' In the Middle Ages longer 
prayers were voluntarily used ; the Saints 
and Mary were invoked ; sometimes, they 
scolded the Devil, calling him baker, or 
cook of hell, [pistor, coqims AcJierontis.) 
The learning of some exorcists not being 
■ equal to their faith, their formulas were 
not free from puerility, or superstition. 
But the Church was not slow in rectify- 
ing them. At the present day the pru- 
dence of ecclesiastical authority is ex- 
treme, and no impropriety is to be feared. 



ARB WHAT DOES HE DO? 



141 



xxiy. 

DO MEANS EXIST WHEREBY THE LAITY MAY 
EEEECTUALLY COMBAT SATAN? 

Undoubtedlv : but not in their own 
proper strength. Before a spirit man 
is hke a child before a giant. Divine 
assistance alone restores, the equilibrium. 
Our first parents, not choosing to corre- 
spond with grace from above, gave way 
in the struggle; and becoming rebellious 
tow^ards God, they found themselves 
slaves of Satan. In virtue of a law, ap- 
parently hard enough, in reality highly 
advantageous, since it permitted man's 
fall only to raise him higher — in virtue 
of the law of universal responsibility, 
v/ith guilty Adam, the visible world, of 
which God constituted him master, and 
his posterity itself, fell under the power 
of the Devil, his conqueror. But, im- 
Tiwdiately^ the Divine Word, to whose 
image man had been created, charged 



142 DOES THE DE^TL EXIST, 

Himself with expiating Adam's trans- 
gression, and procuring for all men tlie 
graces necessarj^ for taking a splendid 
revenge on liell. By the future merits 
of Christ during forty ages, by His past 
merits since the sacrifice of Calvary, the 
weakest amongst Adam's children have 
triumphed and may still triumph over all 
the evil spirits combined against him. 

"Be strengthened in the Lord," says 
St. Paul. ''Put you on the armor of 
God, that 3"0u may be able to stand 
against the snares of the Devil. For 
our wrestling is not against flesh and 
blood, but against principalities and pow- 
ers, against the rulers of the world of 
this darkness, against the spirits of wick- 
edness in high places. . . . Taking in 
all things the shield of faith, wherev/ith 
you may be able to extinguish all the 
fiery darts of the most wicked one ; . . . 
and take unto you the sword of the spirit, 
which is the Word of God; vvatch and 
pray." (Eph., vi.) 



AND WHAT DOES HE BO ? 143 



" Without me," said the Divine Master 
Himself, ^'you can do nothing." "No, 
nothing," adds the Apostle, " not even to 
pronounce His holy name aright ; but 1 
can do all things in Him who strengtheneth 
me." (Phil., iv, 13.) 

Thus, by recourse to the Man -God, 
any man may combat the Devil, and, 
even after a defeat, after innumerable 
defeats, break his chains; the gloomy 
empire of Satan will confine only his 
v/illing slaves, throughout eternity. 



XXV. 

CN HOLY WATER, THE SIGN OF THE CROSS, 
AND RELICS. 

In the struggle against the Devil, 
Christians employ the spiritual weapons 
just named, and unbelievers find their 
conduct very amusing. " How," say they, 
" can that water, for instance, drive away 
the Devil, whom it cannot even touchy 



144 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 

since lie lias no body?" The Cliristian 
answers : It is not the water that puts 
the Devil to flight ; it is the blessing. A 
blessing is a sphitiial virtue, which God 
gives to a material object, in order that 
we may make use of it at the proper 
time. The object blessed becomes thus, 
by the will of God, the vehicle of a grace 
conformable to the blessing it has re- 
ceived." 

Now, behold what the blessing of the 
water is : 

I exorcise thee, creature of water : in 
the name of God, the Father Almighty, 
in the name of Jesus Christ, His Son, 
Our Lord, and in virtue of the Holy 
Ghost, to- the end that thou mayest be- 
come w^ater exorcised to put to flight all 
the pov^^ers of the enemy; to root out 
and displant the enemy himself, with his 
apostate angels, by virtue of Our Lord 
Jesus Christ." . . . 

Thanks to this prayer of the Church, 
the holy water, religiously employed, 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO ? 



145 



drives awaj' the Devil, tormented, not by 
tlie water, but by the Divine virtue 
whereof that water . is the receptacle. 
The use of holy water dates from the 
first ages of Christianity^ since the Apos- 
tolical Constitutions, drav^n up about the 
end of the fourth century, call it a means 
of putting the devils to flight. Good 
Christians always have holy water in 
their dwelling; they take some, at least 
in the morning, when they awake, and at 
night before going to sleep. As for oth- 
ers, they ought to know that, if people 
are not obliged to take holy water, they 
are obliged to respect that water, like all 
that the Church sanctifies by her bene- 
diction. 

The virtue of the Sign of the Cross,, in 
the conflict with Satan, is easily under- 
stood. To make that sign, is to remind 
him of the whole history of his defeat, 
to invoke against him the just reprisals 
of the Almighty Crucified. Hear Lac- 

tanctius declaring, before Paganism still 
8 



146 DOES THE DKYIL EXIST, 

erect, the power of that sign which is 
soon to give victory to those who follow^ 
it : He will know how terrible to the 
devils is the sign of the cross, w^ho shall 
see how, adjured by the name of Christ, 
they go forth from the bodies they pos- 
sessed. For, as Jesus Christ, when he 
went about amongst men, put all the 
devils to flight by His w^ord, and brought 
back to their usual sense their minds dis- 
turbed and crazed even to fury by the 
incursions of the evil spirits ; so do His 
disciples drive away the devils b}' the 
name of their Master and the sign of His 
passion. The proof of this is easily given. 
When the Pagans offer sacrifices to their 
gods, if there be in the assembly any one 
Vvhose forehead is marked with that sign, 
the sacrifices do not succeed, and the 
oracle cannot answer those who consult 
him." Lactanctius adds that, " On seve- 
ral occasions, the devils complaining of 
the presence of those profane persons 
who impeded their action, cruel per- 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



147 



secntion was thus excited against the 
faithful." 

"We Christians," said St. Anthony, to 
the heathen philosophers who visited him 
in his solitude, "We Christians, by merely 
pronouncing the name of Jesus crucified, 
drive away those demons whom you wor- 
ship as gods. Their charms and their 
influence lose all their power wherever 
the sign of the cross is formed.^' And, 
making the sign of the cross, before 
them, over the possessed, he delivered 
them. 

By the frequent employment of the 
sign of the cross in exorcisms, the Church 
attests the power of that sign, and recom- 
mends it to her children. 

The relics of the Saints are also a 
potent weapon against the devils. To 
the glorious dust of His friends God com- 
municates a supernatural virtue, fruitful 
irt wonders of every kind, but especially 
terrible to hell. Here, amongst a thou- 
sand others, is one very striking instance : 



148 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



Cfesar Gallus, a yeiy religious prince, 
liaying consecrated, at Dapline, a suburb 
of Antioch, opposite tlie Temple of Apollo, 
a church to the true God, under the invo- 
cation of St. Babylas, placed therein the 
relics of that holy martyr. Immediately 
the Devil vras struck dumb in his temple. 
A little later, JuHan, the Apostate, came 
to Antioch to restore ^vith great pomp 
the worship of Apollo, and, offering to 
that false god victims by hundreds, be- 
sought him to continue his oracles, or 
at least to tell the cause of his silence. 
''The town of Daphne," answers the de- 
mon, " is full of dead bodies ; let them be 
taken away, and I will speak." Under- 
standing the hint, as St. Chrysostom 're- 
marks, the Apostate caused the shrine of 
the holy martyr to be carried off, and the 
demon was able to speak. But, three 
months after, the temple of Apollo was 
consumed by lightning. 

It is not unworthy of remark that 
sacred words and blessed things, which 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 149 



irritate and OYercome tlie Devil, produce 
similar effects on objects which serve for 
spiritualistic conjurations. A table v/as 
seen to break asunder at the moment 
when a blessed rosary was, for the third 
time, laid upon it ; a basket was seen, as 
related by the learned Abbe Bautain, 
formerly Vicar-General of Paris, to twist 
itself like a serpent and fly from the 
presence of a Gospel. If the employ- 
ment of these means ha-s not always an 
immediate success, it is that, then, as in 
the case of a priest exorcising one pos- 
sessed, the Devil submits to suffer rather 
than confess himself vanquished. Against 
that immortal and infuriate enemy, no 
weapon gives here below a decisive vic- 
tory, and our last hour shall be that of a 
final combat. 



150 



DOES THE DEVEL EXIST, 



XXVI. 

Ts'EAT IS THE ADVANTAGE OE TKE STATS 
OE GEACE, IX THE STEEGGLE VTITH THE 
DEMON ? 

Every Christian is,, by liis ovn free 
clioice, in one or the other of these states : 
the state of grace — tlte state of mo/rtal sin, 

Man. in the state of grace, is beloveJ 
by God ; he is united to Jesns Christ, as 
the branch is to the trunk that nourishes 
it with its sap : in his soul, the Father, 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost do dwell, 
lending him a habitual and uninterrupted 
aid. It is tru.e the devils prowl around 
him — some of their darts may perchance 
have wounded him ; but he remains living 
with a Divine hfe. because God, the true 
life of every spirit, is in him, and with 
him. Adopted son of the King of kings, 
that Christian is f/'^r. 

But as soon as the unhappy being has, 
by a mortal transgression, wiifuhy broken 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



151 



the bond of charity which united him to 
God, a frightful change is wrought. God 
withdraws His habitual aid ; the branch 
severed from the trunk becomes barren. 
The Demon takes the place which the 
Lord, in departing, left vacant ; he reigns 
there by right of conquest, and if the Sa- 
viour's mercy did not interpose, he would 
reign there for ever. A prodigal child, a 
rebel, a fugitive, that man is a slave. 

Slave! The word is harsh, but it is 
correct. Pure spirits are stronger than 
the sons of Adam. Either the filial obe- 
dience to God which leads to glorj^ and 
felicity ; or subjection to Satan which 
works degradation and ruin ! One day. 
Our Lord said to the Jews : If you con- 
tinue in my word, the truth shall make 
3^ou free." The Jews, dissatisfied, an- 
swered : ''We haA^e never been slaves." 
Jesus answers them : " Amen, amen, I 
say unto you, that whosoever committeth 
sin, is the servant of sin. You say you 
are the children of God, but you have 



152 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



■ the De\il for your fatlier, and the desire^s 
of your father you will do." (John, ylii, 
31-44.) 

The difference between the soldier 
fighting under the orders of an ever-yic- 
torious chief and a slave enchained by 
his most cruel enemy, is but the imper- 
fect image of that which exists between 
the Christian in a state of grace and the 
Christian in mortal sin. The former, with 
a little vigilance, easily prevails over 
temptations ; the latter, in order to resist 
his tyrant, requires heroic efforts and a 
very special aid from Jesus Christ. The 
final damnation of the reprobate was 
occasioned by this : having too long ne- 
glected recovering tJie state of grace, they 
were urged by the devils from one crime 
to another,^ even to the obduracy in which 
death struck them. To let those spirits 
of darkness abide in our soul, is to cast 
ourselves madly into the most evident 
danger of an eternal slavery : let us 
never forget this. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



153 



XXVII. 

ON THE BREAD OF THE STEONG. 

By baptism, God, Our Father, deliv- 
ers us from the power of darkness, and 
translates us into the kingdom of His 
beloved Son." (Col, i, 13.) By absolu- 
tion, the bonds of malediction, which we 
had voluntarily tied again, are broken. 
For the Almighty Liberator has said to 
His lieutenants : "Whatsoever ye loose 
on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven." 
(St. Matth., XVIII, 18.) That is to say, the 
liberating sentences you shall pronounce 
here below shall be sanctioned above. 
To escape from the Devil, to avoid hell, 
the infidel must have recourse to haptism; 
the Christian to confessions^' But after 

This is the common law. The haptism of desin 
and perfect contrition suffice, only in exceptional cases, 
wherein tlie real reception of the sacraments of hap* 
tism and penance is inipossihle. 



154 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



baptism, or absolution, all is not ended 
The Demon is going to return to the 
charge. Driven from the dwelling of 
which sin had made him master, he says : 
' I will return into my house, whence I 
have gone forth.' And he goes back, 
taking with him seven other spirits, more 
wicked than himself," to reconquer it. 
If he succeeds, the new state of that 
man, overcome anew, shall be still more 
wretched than the former. Christian, you 
have put him to flight ; be watchful, then. 
Most assuredly, the war will begin again. 
Nevertheless, have confidence ! An all- 
powerful Sillj knocks at the door of the 
place and offers to defend it ; that ally is 
Jesus Christ in person, in the Eucharistic 
mystery. 

The Holy Communion is the principal 
aufl indispensoMe tueapon of the Christian 
in his spiritual combats ivith the infernal 
poivers ; it is because they either do not 
receive Holy Communion, or receive it 
badly, or too seldom, that the devils are 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



155 



terrible to tlie frail cliildren of Adam."^ 
As soon as a Christian nourishes himself 
with the bread of the strong, as St. Vin- 
cent de Paul remarks, all is changed ; 
that Christian returns from the Holy Ta- 
ble ''like a lion, inflamed with Divine 
ardor, terrible to the demons," (these are 
the words of St. John Chrysostom ;) and 
what wonder? That Christian marches 
to battle clothed not only with the armor 
furnished by Jesus Christ, but with Jesus 
Christ Himself ! Hell may, doubtless, in 
its fury, assail him with clesperate rage at 
the very moment when he receives his 
God ; that has been seen, and is seen 
every day. But hell shall not enslave 
him. He v/ho communicates well, does 
ALL WELL," further said St. Vincent de 
Paul. Yes, he who communicates well, 
that is to say, frequently and worthily, 

* Immediately after the sacrilegious communion of 
Judas, Sakin entered into him. He who communicates 
badly, makes of the celestial bread a deadli/ poison ; ho 
who does not communicate, dies of inanition. 



156 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



shall count his steps by victories ; lie 
shall keep the treasure of the holy and 
glorious liberty of the children of God, 
and his last struggle with hell shall be a 
splendid triumph. 

O men, you who often complain of 
being tempted beyond your strength ; you 
say that the assaults of the Devil are of 
irresistible violence. I Vv'ell beheve it. 
What would you say of the soldier 
who, in the midst of long and toilsome 
marches, combats by day and by night, 
would content himself with a piece of 
bread every tvro or three days, and com- 
plain of sinking under fatigue ? Take 
more nourishment," you would say to 
him. And I say to you : Soldier of vk- 
tue, communicate oftener." A general 
law obliges every Christian to receive 
Holy Communion at Easter ; the law of 
vour conscience obl!G;es vou to commu- 
nicate as often as you require in order to 
overcome the Devil. O men, understand, 
then, that in presence of your invisible 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 157 



enemies, as in that of your personal mis- 
eries, tlie iceaJcer you feel yourselves, the 
greater is your need of having recourse 
often to the Bread of the Strong, to 
that Host which, in the combats of the 
spiritual life, is our strength, our help, 
our safety.^'' 

XXVIII. 

MARY, HELP OF CHRISTIANS. 

All those who love the Mother of God, 
that is to say, all true Catholics, are per- 
suaded that, after God, Mary is our prin- 
cipal support in our conflicts with Satan. 
This persuasion is not merely a pious 
conjecture ; it rests on constant experi- 
ence and on dogmatical foundations the 
most unshaken. After the fall of our 
first parents, the Devil who had seduced 
them heard the Lord say to him : " I will 

* See, on this subject, so practical and of such 
grave importance, La Communion,''^ (The Commu- 
nion,) by Mgr. de S^gur. 



158 DOES THE BEYIL EXIST, 



place enmity between the woman and 
thee, between her seed and thine ; and 

THE WOMAN SHALL CEUSH THY HEAD, ijJSa 

conteret caput tmim,'' (Gen., iii, 15.) All 
the promises of God are fulfilled. Mary 
realized that a' first time, by giving bkth 
to the Man-God. But it is known that 
Mary was not, in that solemn hour, a 
blind instrument. She did, in the order 
of redemption, what Lucifer ought to 
have accomplished in the order of crea- 
tion ; she was, amongst creatures, the first 
minister of God ; she was Mother, not 
only corporally, but also, and especially, 
in heart. "Wherefore, more generously 
than any other, she took a williug and 
active part in the great work of the de- 
liverance of mankind, enslaved by the 
Devil. Now, by a just requital, she con- 
tributes more effectually than any other, 
to the personal application of hberating 
grace to each of the souls of whom hell 
seeks to regain possession. Charity, the 
eternal law of tlie children of God, reigns 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 159 

in paradise. Our triumphant brethren 
do not forget us, and their affectionate 
solicitude comes to our aid in the strug- 
gle we yet sustain; but, more powerful 
and more loving than our brethren, that 
glorious Mother covers us with a more 
efficacious protection. After the name of 
Jesus, no name is more terrible to hell 
than hers. Mary has so often vanquished 
our enemy and saved souls which, with- 
out her miraculous intervention, were lost, 
that the Demon always trembles when 
she is invoked. 

"In a good family of Lille," says a 
pious servant of Mary, "a young girl 
named Catherine Dubus, became pos- 
sessed of several devils, no one could tell 
how or why. Only the external facts 
could be known. When the terrible 
guests who had seized upon her agitated 
and dragged her about, six stout men 
could not hold that young girl. Her 
invisible enemies brought her to places 
where she might cast lierseK down head- 



160 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST, 



long or drown herself ; tliey daslied liei 
against tlie walls as tliougb. trying hard 
to make away with her. They had de- 
praved her senses to such a degree that 
she eat things that might kill her, sought 
for poisons, and chewed stones. Had 
she been a poor girl, people would not 
have been wanting who suspected some 
fearful jugglery for the purpose of making 
money ; but strong-minded people had 
not even this resource, for Catherine be- 
longed to a family in easy circumstances. 

"She was taken to the shrine of Our 
Lady of Montaigu, (in Belgium) ; she is 
exorcised before the image of Mary. Du- 
ring the imposing ceremony, the demo- 
niac was seen to throw off her bewitched 
stomach needles, stones, nails, brimstone. 
She w^as heard to utter strange words and 
reveal unknown facts. Several times she 
exhaled puffs of smoke, which went forth 
from her mouth and vanished. She was 
delivered." 

Who is the first author that relates. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



161 



this ? Justus Lipsus, y/lio, with Scaliger 
and Casaubon, formed that famous trium- 
%drate of learned men in the second half 
of the sixteenth century. 

"Whilst yet young, and already attacked 
furiously by the Devil, who foresaw in 
him a terrible adversary, Francis de Sales 
was tormented by a thought of despair. 
One day, he at length regains peace . . , 
before an image of Mary, whom he had 
invoked/^'- 

But what is the use of multiplying ex- 
amples? Here is a fact which is under 
the eyes of all. To-day, amongst us, 
thousands of young girls, even amid the 
perils of poverty, of ignorance, of desti- 
tution, resist all the assaults of hell, and 
not only keep their reputation untouched, 
but their heart pure. "Whence comes 
this prodigy? It is that they are clilU 
dren of Mary ! And their triumph is 
entirely the work of the tutelary Virgin 

This statue is venerated in the chapel of tlic La- 
dies of St. Thomas of Yillanova, in Paris. 



162 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



that no sooner do tliey wilfully give up 
tlieir pious assemblies, than these poor 
children forget God, duty, virtue, and fall 
like others ! 

The povrers of the abyss know better 
than we how formidable to them is the 
Mother of their Conqueror. They have 
experienced the virtue of the ''Hail 
Mary," of the " Memorare,'' of the beads, 
of the scapular, of that little medal 
which recalls the memory of the spotless 
Virgin. We all remember the outburst 
of blasphemy that greeted, seventeen 
years ago, the Definition of the Immacu- 
late Conception. What harm was done 
to the wicked and the unbelieving by 
the decree of the Church declaring Mary 
exempt from that original stain which, 
accordmg to them, does not exist ? But 
hell trembled, seeing Mary honored ; and 
by the mouth, and pen, and arm of those 
who follow its inspirations, it exhaled its 
fury. Well! its conduct is a lesson for 

us ; it detests the Virgin most pure : we 
9 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



163 



will love lier ! It would have her forgot- 
ten : we will every where proclaim her 
greatness ! It fears her : we will invoke 
her with filial confidence ! She shall 
crush the head of the old serpent : she 
will be for us Our Lady of Victory 1 



XXIX. 

OF ANGELICAL ASSISTANCE. 

"The angels," says St. Paul, *'are min- 
istering spirits, sent to minister for those 
who shall receive the inheritance of sal- 
vation." (Heb., I, 14.) This is not the 
place to enumerate all the occasions 
wherein Holy "Writ and history show the 
tutelary power of the faithful angels in 
operation. In the ninetieth Psalm, {cum- 
invocarum,) we see the just man defended 
against the arrows that fly in the dark- 
ness and against the noon-day devil. No 
evil shall come to him ; nor shall the 
scourge come near his dwelling. But 



164 



DOES THE DETEL EXIST^ 



llOY/? God has commanded His angels 
to keep liim in all liis "wajs ; in their 
hands they bear him up, lest he dash his 
foot against a stone. From the cele- 
brated saying of Our Lord Jesns Christ, 
declaring that even little children have, 
to protect "them, angels who see the face 
of the Heavenly Father, holy doctors and 
theologians haye deduced, by plain rea- 
soning, the belief in the Guardian Angel. 
It is probable enongh that each of us 
is more particularly attacked by one 
devil, as we are each specially guarded 
by one faithful spirit. Against the angel 
of dai'kness, recourse must be had to the 
angel of light. He lacks neither zeal nor 
power ; but a general law of Providence 
so arranges that all assistance from above 
comes fi'om God directly, either by angels 
and saints, associated in the government 
and sanctification of mankind, or demand- 
ed by humble, respectful, trusting prayer. 

How charming is that story of the An- 
gel Raphael, which even Kttle children 



ABD WHAT DOES HE DO? 1G5 



know ! In two cities far distant from 
each otlier, two pious families were in 
affliction. Tobias was blind, poor, per- 
secuted. Raguel liad seen the young 
men to whom he had successively given 
the hand of Sara, his daughter, die a 
violent death, slain, the Scripture says, 
by the devil xismodeus. God sends His 
angel, St. Raphael, to bring back joy to 
these two sorrowing households. The 
3"oung Tobias has to go to Kages ; Ra- 
phael, under the appearance of a youth- 
ful stranger, offers to be his guide. One 
day, as Tobias is washing his feet in the 
/ Tigris, an enormous fish darts upon him. 
"Take him," says the mysterious guide, 
and draw him to thee." Tobias obeys, 
and keeps the heart and liver of tlie 
fish, according to the orders he received. 
Chance, as frivolous people would say, 
Peovidence, says reason enlightened by 
faith, brings Tobias to the house of Ka- 
guei. Tobias marries Sara : they spend 
the three first nights after the wedding 



166 DOES TEE DEVIL EXIST, 

in prayer ; the deyii is expelled by the 
angel. Tobias returns to bis aged father 
Avi:h Eagiiers wealth, and cures his bhnd- 
ness by the a23phcation of the fish's galL 
The two faniihes are happy. The hea- 
venly messenger at length makes himseK 
knc'vrn ; he gives affectionate advice to 
those whom he has protected, and dis- 
appears. 

Many Saints, since the time of Jesus 
Christ, have enjoyed favors similar to 
those vrhich Tobias received. Eome, the 
city of admirable memories, still shows, 
on the Plaza Navona, the spot where St. 
Agnes, a child of twelve years, dragged 
by the executioners to a house of infamy, 
found tlie angel lohom the Lord had pre- 
pared to defend her. 

The angel of the Indies appeared to 
St. Franeis Xavier, to exhort him to 
carry the Gospel courageously to those 
countries where, after fifteen centuries of 
Christianity, the devils vv'ere still univers- 
ally worshipped. 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 167 



In fine, wherever God exercises His 
bounty, the ministers of that bounty in- 
terfere the more actively, according as 
our recourse to their fraternal support is 
more ardent and tender. Their delight, 
like that of the incarnate Word, their 
Chief, is doing good. 

Let us, then, know how to repeat, with 
the Church, that invocation with which 
the public office every evening concludes : 
" Yisit, O Lord, this habitation ; drive 
far from it all snares of the enemy ; let 
Thy holy angels dwell therein, and Thy 
blessing be upon us for ever. Through 
Christ Our Lord." 

At a period when the audacity and 
influence of the demons are redoubled, 
devotion to the holy angels ought to re- 
vive. Now more than ever should the 
priest, the Christian mother, inculcate it 
to the young souls whom God confides to 
them, in order that a thorough Christian 
education may raise them up to Him. 



168 DOES THE DEYTL EXIST^ 

XXX. 

FINAL DESXm" OE THE YICTORS AND THE 
TANQUISHED. 

Tlie present life is a conflict tliat lasts 
from dawn till niglit. Whatever may be 
tlie number of liis yictories, the just man 
may still fall^ if he cease to struggle ; 
wliateyer may be the number of his de- 
feats, the sinner may rise again, if, from 
the depth of his misery, he cries to God, 
his support. But death comes at last. 
And ttien? . . . Then? say those spirits 
who, for some years, come so wilhngly 
to chat with the curious who listen to 
them— then? People shall begin a new 
life in a new sphere, where they shall be 
lodged according to their previous merits ; 
and from that new hostelry, they shall 
pass on, by a new death, indefinitely to 
another. That if one sometimes turn 
away from God by disobedience, he need 
not be very much troubled, because Our 
Creator, let us do what we may, must and 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



169 



v/ill give lis felicity. Those spirits knoAv 
well what they are about. To say that 
evil shall remain uiipimished, would be 
too much ; it would horrify men ! To 
say that the punishment shall be light 
and easy, is all that is necessary to make 
mankind, never much afraid of any pur- 
gatory Yv^hatsoeyer — putting off to some 
one of those numerous existences prom- 
ised to it, the fulfilment of God's com- 
mandments — always answer those who 
preach virtue : " To-morrovf, to-morrow." 

Christianity, that teaching brought from 
lieaTen by a God, and attested by so 
muBj prophecies and miracles ; Christian- 
ity, Vf hich, by the splendor of the proof 
of all kinds which it brought in support 
of . its truth, made itself acceptable, in 
spite of the sacrifices it requires, by 
the Pagan and by the barbarian world ; 
Christianity, which has .withstood eight- 
een centuries of attack; Christianity, in 
which we must believe, if we beheve in 
anything — Christianity maintains, against 



170 



DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



this renewal of the errors of India, of 
Pythagoras, the decree of the Apostle : 
"It is appointed for men once to die, and 
after this the judgment." (Heb., ix, 27.) 

God does not permit men to mock Him 
and imitate the scholar Avho says : My 
master will punish mC;, I know; but, no 
matter, I am going to carry out my own 
notion ; punishment will come after, and 
when it is oyer, I shall have got the bet- 
ter of the master ; I shall have done my 
own wiU, and, in spite of his punishment, 
I shall have been the strongest." The 
faculty of disobeying God, that is to say, 
of doing under the eyes of God, and with 
the power y/e hold from God, that wliich 
God forbids, is granted to inteUigent 
beings for a time, in order that trial may 
he made, and merit acquired ; but this 
astonishing position is not to last always ; 
war between the Creator and the crea- 
ture is not the normal state of creation. 
After having regarded the contest for 
some time, God says : " It is enough." 



WHxVT DOES HE DO? 



171 



And death goes ia search of the comljat- 
ants, whom it brings before His juug- 
ment-seat. There, each one is judged, 
and introduced into the house of his 
eternity. 

What does the victorious Christian find 
in that house of eternity ? A glory and a 
bhss which he shall enjoy in assured peace. 

"He that hath an ear, let him hear 
v/hat the spirit saith : To him that over- 
cometh, I will give to eat of the tree of 
life which is in the paradise of my God. 
Behold, the Devil shall cast some of you 
into prison, that you may be tried. Be 
thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
thee the crown of life. To him that over- 
cometh, I will give the hidden manna, a 
new name which no man knoweth, but he 
that receivetli it. . . . He that shall over- 
come, shall be clothed in white garments, 
and I will confess his name before my 
Father, and before His angels. . . . He 
that shall overcome, I will make him a 
pillar in the temple of my God, and he 



172 DOES THE DEVIL EXIST, 



shall go out no more. ... To liim tliat 
sliall overcome, I will grant to sit with me 
in my throne." (Apoc, ii and iii.) 

God, whose infinite power is equaled 
hj His infinite generosity, will not be 
sparing in the reward of the man who 
shall have fought the good fight ; Him- 
self will be the eternal joy of His faith- 
ful servant. 

But what shall happen to him wdiora 
death shall surprise loaded with the 
chains of Satan, become, through malice 
or through cowardice, the companion and 
slave of the revolted spirits? In vain 
wall he allege the strength of his enemies. 
He had been enrolled under the banner 
of an ever-victorious Chief. An Apostle 
had told hnn : *'Be subject to God, but 
resist the Devil, and he will fly from 
you." (St. James, iv, 7.) Another Apos- 
tle had warned him that the sting of 
Satan must be opposed by the grace of 
Jesus Christ. " (II Cor., xii, 7, 9.) It was 
sufficient for him to look around him and 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



173 



consider the just in their ways to kno^ 
that a Liberator exists. He preferred 
the shame of a slothful bondage to the 
hardships of the light. That which he 
chose of his own free will is now imposed 
upon him ; he shall remain far from the 
God he has forsaken, far from the cour- 
ageous soldiers of the Lord from whom 
he separated ; he shall be banished to 
the lowest depths of creation with the 
masters he has preferred, because they 
favored his passions, to the God who, for 
him, died on a cross. There is the future 
of the wilfully conquered. 

And, in the lapse of ages, an hour will 
come — the last — when all creation shall 
be summoned to hear the judgment of 
every creature pronounced. Then the 
Man -God shall appear surrounded by 
His faithful angels, and He shall say to 
the victorious : Come, ye blessed of my 
i'ather, possess the kingdom prepared 
fo¥ you from the beginning of the world." 
And to the conquered : Go, ye cursed, 



174 DOES THE DETIL EXIST, 

into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil 
and his angels." Immediately, the last 
separation shall take place : the victors 
shall go into ''life everlasting/' the con- 
ciuered into everlastins; punishment/* 
(St. Matth., XXV.) 

Thenceiorvard, no more combatants; 
but the just rewarded and the vricked 
punished. The triumph of good over 
evil will be final, complete, eternal. 

XXXI. 

ADVICE TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE,, A.KD TO 
THO.-E WHO BELIEVE XOT. 

Xow, dear readers, we must conclude. 
The misfortune of most men is that they 
know not how to conclude. They hear a. 
discourse, they read a book, and go to 
their business, or their pleasur^es without 
having asked themselves: ^'T^Tiat is the 
result of this in relation to my personal 
conduct ? Yfhat is the warning that 
Providence now gives me?" 



AND WHAT DOES HE DO? 



175 



The question of tlie Dejil is not one 
of mere curiosity. The question is of a 
living enemy, pov/erful, present, daiiger- 
ous, furious. You are reminded that lie 
has caused the terrible, irremediable ruin 
of a multitude of your fellow -beiugs. 
You are warned, in particular, to avoid 
dark associations, inspired by him, mys- 
terious operations, of which he himself 
(as often as jugglery is not the sole 
mover) is the invisible agent. 

When flight is impossible, fight. Avoid 
more carefully even those trivial faults 
which make the Devil bolder and stronger 
against you ; avoid, especially, mortal 
sin, which would deliver jout soul to him. 
Never sleep, if you possibly can, in the 
captivity of Satan. Be on your guard 
against the love of riches, which fills his 
nets; the love of pleasure, which leads 
to idolatry ; and pride, the father of nil 
errors. Grieve not the Spirit of God. 
Watch, pray. Soon you shall repose in 
the triumphant peace of heaven. 



176 



DOES THE DEYIL EXIST. 



If you have the misfortune not to 
share our belief, be prudent, and do not 
rush into intimacy with mysterious beings 
whose sincerity and good faith you can- 
not possibly verify. Wait till those spirits 
have ceased to give the unedifying sight 
of a confused mixture of the true and 
the false, the grave and the ridiculous, 
of devout conversations and immoral 
conversations. At least, begin by read- 
ing attentively the books published by 
distinguished men who have studied this 
cjuestion coolly and according to the rules 
of sound criticism — the learned works of 
Messrs. de Mirville, Desmousseaux, Biz- 
ouard, from which we have been able to 
borrow but little. Meditate, at least, on 
the solid pamphlets of M. de Koys, Pere 
Matignon, Abbe Tilloy, and Pere Pail- 
loux. Ignorance is not excusable, when 
instruction is to be had ; and heedless- 
ness is very unreasonable, when there is 
question of our immortal soul. 



APPENDIX, 



i 



APPENDIX. 



A. 

SPIRIT-EAPPERS ARE ALL REPROBATE SPIRITS. 
I. 

M. de Tristan, a distinguished member 
of several learned societies, had seen, at 
first, in table-turning, only an electric 
fact ; but in April, 1853, he wrote to M. 
de Mirville : " Dating from the day when 
a light table unexpectedly took to rap- 
ping, this wonder specially attracted our 
attention. ... It became impossible for 
me to doubt that this phenomenon v/as 
due to some agency. 

''The greater part of the time, it is 
true, we had but little fault to find with 
these metaphysical intervening beings^ be- 
cause we act with extreme caution ; but, 
little by little, the numerous falsehoods, 
at first of no importance, became more 



180 



APPENDIX. 



grave, calumnies were multiplied, propo- 
sals of intimacy, of engagement, of good- 
fellowsliip, joined with some doubtful 
opinions, began to excite our suspicions. 
For my part, I am not only convinced of 
tliis intervention, but I have obtained 
the avoical that all these beings are banished 
for ever from the irresence of God'' 

n. 

" I liave seen tables turn. ... I liave 
heard them speak in their own way. 
There are there phenomena of intelh- 
gence, of will, of liberty, . . . and such 
causes have always been caUed spirits. 
But vrhat spirits? It is certain, in the 
first place, that these spirits see and 
know things ,of which we are ignorant 
and which we cannot see. These facts 
are reproduced from day to day. . . . 
The spirits in question, then, see more 
and farther than we do, and if the}^ do 
not always see right and speak truly, it 
remains certain that, without being infal- 



APPENDIX. 



181 



lible, they see things belonging to the 
other world which we perceive not. . . . 
From what I have seen and heard, I say 
confidently that they are not good spirits. 
I want but one proof, and for me it is 
decisive ; it is, that they refuse to answer 
clearly in what concerns Our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and when they are urged to do so 
by an imperative order, the tables resist, 
shake, raise themselves up, and some- 
times turn over and throw themselves on 
the ground, escaping from the hands that 
touch them. ... I have seen these things 
many times ; I one day saw a basket thus 
agitated, t^visting like a serpent, and fly 
creeping away before a book of the Gos- 
pels held out to it without anything being 
said." (M. Bautain, Yicar- General of 
Paris, Doctor of Theology, Law, and 
Medicine.) 

III. 

" At the house of one of my friends, 

an eminent physician," says M. de Mir- 

ville, '^the pencil wrote, word for word, 
10 



182 



APPENDIX. 



tliis sentence : * If you will give yourself 
up to me, soul and body, I will crown all 
your desires, . even that which you have 
most at heart, at this moment. If you 
consent, sign your name under mine, and 
that will suffice.' . . . And the spirit 
signed OidfT 

IV. 

M. de Sauley, of the Institute, who, 
after a long term of unbelief, at length 
yielded to evidence, also saw himself con- 
tinually solicited to engage. He believed 
himself in connection with two spirits. 
One, violent, blustering, blaspheming, in- 
solent, advised, and did nothing but what 
was bad; the other, very smooth and 
gentle, disputed with the first, and made 
edification succeed to scandal. But be- 
hold when, summoned to explain how it 
was, this excellent spirit, after a struggle 
of two hours, replies : " Poor dupe, you 
thought you had two of us, and you had 
but one ; I was alone." 



APPENDIX. 183 
V. 

Facts which occurred at Eauzan (Gi- 
ronde) in 1853. Extract from the answers 
obtained by Viscount de Meslon, and facts 
relating thereto : 

Q. Is it really with intelligent beings 
we have to do ? — A. Yes. Q, Are you 
good spirits? — A, Yes. Q, Is there an 
everlasting hell? — A. No. Q, Does the 
Catholic religion, then, deceive us on that 
point? — A. Yes. Q, In what does the 
punishment of the wicked consist? — A, 
In going to pass a shorter or longer time 
of trial in the sphere nearest the earth, 
then to rise successively and progress- 
ively from sphere to sphere, according 
as the spirit is purified, till at length it 
reaches the last sphere, and is reimited 
to God. Q, Are you of the same nature 
as the spirit - rappers of the United 
States?— J. Yes." 

Soon after a spirit declares himself the 
brother of M. de Meslon, who died in 



184 



APPENDIX. 



1845, in great sentiments of religion, and 
answers with the utmost precision all the 
questions put to him in consequence of 
this announcement. He is adjured, in 
the name of the living God^ not to deceive, 
and crucifixes and blessed objects are 
placed on the table. The spirit persists 
in saying that he was sent by God to 
enlighten his family, to defend it against 
the snares of the devils, and to guide it 
in the way of virtue and of truth. Every 
moment, he quotes, of himself, sentences 
from Holy "Writ, urges his hearers to love 
God and to hon'or the Blessed Virgin. 
When he is asked questions relating to 
financial matters, or the future, he stren- 
uously refuses to answer, and admon- 
ishes, in the name of God, those who 
interrogate him, as to their lightness and 
imprudence. 

But, one evening, a small work-table, 
questioned in its turn, advises distrust of 
the spirit of the round table. The latter 
replies by summoning, in the name of the 



APPENDIX. 



185 



living God, the spirit of the work-table 
to confess that he is the spirit of evil. 
After an obstinate resistance and some 
fearful contortions, the little table avows 
that it is animated by the Devil, envious 
of the good which the departed soul was 
doing to his family. "Thenceforward," 
says M. de Meslon, "our confidence 
would have been absolute, when God, 
w^ho saw the depth of our hearts, no 
longer permitted the devil to deceive us. 
One Sunday, the Httle round table, which 
almost always spoke of itself, at first 
refused to answer, then rose up impa- 
tiently, and said to us these words verba- 
tim : ' I am tired repeating to jou inces- 
santly honeyed w^ords which I do not 
think, and expressing affectionate senti- 
ments, when I have no feeling for you 
but hatred.' ' But are you not him whom 
you pretend to be ? ' we asked in ama:2e- 
ment. 'No.' 'Who are you, then?' 
' The spirit of evil' ' What was the ob- 
ject of the disgraceful farce you have 



186 



APPENDIX. 



been so long playing Trith us ? ' ^ Seeking 
to inspire you with, confidence, tlie better to 
deceive you oftericards' ' But did you not 
suffer at being obliged to speak to us 
of God, the Tirgin, and the Saints, and 
especially wlien a crucifix, religious med- 
als, etc., were laid on the table ? ' ' I suf- 
fered, but concealed my suffering in the 
hope of succeeding afterwards in leading 
you astray.' ^ You hate us, then ? ' Tes, 
because you are Christians.' Then the 
spirit took leave of us with these words : 
' God forces me to speak thus ; hell 
claims me back ; farewell."' 

These facts are related more at length, 
with others quite as significant, in M. de 
]iIirYille's QueMion des Esprits, (Sphit 
Question,) a work which cannot be too 
highly commended to well-disposed peo- 
ple who, being deceived, do not recognize 
the wolf in sheep's clothing. Every being 
that holds wicked discourse is necessarily 
wicked ; but he who says good things is 
not necessarily good : clever h^-pocrisy 



APPENDIX. 



187 



borrows tlie language of virtue, and even 
of piety, so as easily to be mistaken for 
them. The name of God, carelessly put 
forward through rash curiositj^ does not 
frighten the evil spirits ; employed with- 
out much faith, it does not immediately 
triumph over their pride. Finally, every 
being, whether man or spirit, who ad- 
vances a doctrine, on questions of vital 
iniportance to mankind, concerning its 
duties or its future, ought to furnish 
rational demonstration, or prove clearly 
that he is sent by God. Our invisible 
gossips have neither one nor the other. 
Their philosophy is not more solid than 
that of any dreamer of flesh and bone. 
And very far from furnishing proof of a 
Divine mission, they are often compelled, 
as in the fi.rst days of Christianity, to 
show the tips of their horns. Spiritists 
who are in good faith, use habitually, and 
with perfectly pure intention, the Sign of 
THE Cross ; the mask will fall from your 
good spirits ! If jom reject a practice so 



188 



APPENDIX. 



easy, j^ou have only yourselves to blame 
for your blindness. 

B. 

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 

" Give ns," said a person to spirit-rap- 
pers, "some idea of Divine goodness." 
" How could I, since it is infinite ?" " It 
is infinite, and yet you suffer, unhappy 
one!" "Cruelly." "And for ever?" 
"For eA^er." "But, wretched as you aj)- 
pear to be, and God being as good as 
you say, suppose you tried to soften Him 
—who knows?" "You ask what would 
be absolutely impossible." " And why ? " 
"He cannot pardon me, since I do not 
want Mm to do so'' "And if He pro- 
posed complete annihilation, would you 
accept it?" After some hesitation one 
of the spirits rephes: ''Yes, because heing 
is the only good I still hold from Him, and 
then, heing no longer anything, I should he 
free of EimJ' The other said : " No, I 



APPENDIX. 



189 



icoidcl not accept, because I sliould no lon(/er 
^ have the consolation of hating Him,'" " Do 
3'ou, tlien, hate so?'* "i)o I hate? . . . 
Why, my name is liatred ; I hate all ; I 
hate myself." "... 

To this instance of candor on the part 
of reprobate spirits, we might add sev- 
eral avowals forced from them by exor- 
cisms or the power of a lively faith ; but 
usually, as St. Augustine observed in the 
fifth century, those proud deceivers deny 
their reprobation, and especially its eter- 
nal duration. In our days, spirit-rap- 
pers work with as much energy as unani- 
mity to replace the doctrine of an eternal 
hell by that of the migration of souls, 
called by the Greeks metempsychosis. 
According to Herodotus, this doctrine 
originated amongst the Egyptians, who 
taught it to the Greek philosopher Py- 
thagoras, whence it passed into the writ- 
ings of Plato. The Druid priests of the 
Celts appear also to have been infatuated 

Quesiion des E^prits^ ch, m. 



190 



APPENDIX. 



with this error, which, after haying van- 
ished before the hght of Christianity, 
reappeared only amongst some Eastern 
heretics, who would fain have made a 
confused mixture of Plato and the Gos- 
pel. After a long enough sleep, it has 
again raised its head ; in Germany, in 
the works of the pantheist Krause, and 
in France, in those of Fourier. 

According to Fourier, " after the pres- 
ent life, each soul, whatever may have 
been its conduct, takes possession of a 
delightful existence in a subtile body 
named aroma. Supporting itself in the 
air, and going through, without an effort, 
the hardest bodies, the aromal body con- 
tinually feels sensations as delicious as 
varied." The author declares that if all 
men tuould liasten to kill themselves, they 
would understand the superiority of this 
other existence. ''Each and every soul 
shall pass twenty-seven thousand j^ears 
on the earth, and fifty-four thousand in 
other celestial bodies, after which it shall 



APPENDIX, 



191 



be absorbed in the soul of the eartli." 
The author of Terre et Cid^ (Earth and 
Heaven,) Jean Eejnaud, has reproduced, 
spmtuaKzing it, this dream of the metem- 
psychosis, and, lastly, the spirit-rappers 
proclaim it as the final key of hum.an 
destiny. But this migration of souls is 
not only unproved, but not even likely. 
In fact, as M. H. Martin de Eennes judi- 
ciously observes," '*to propose to the 
human soul endless trials, instead of 
one decisive trial, is to diminish the 
hope that encourages, and the fear that 
prevents us from doing evil and perse- 
vering therein." 

Besides, if God had given us this 
strange destiny. He would apparently 
have apprised us of it. But no, the 
migration of souls has, in its favor, a 
small number of dreamers, reinforced by 
invisible goblins, who, with their other 
little accomplishments, tell people's age, 

La vie future, suivant la foi el la religion. (The Fu- 
ture Life, according to Faith and Religion.) 



192 



APPENDIX, 



make tables dance the polka, sketch 
devils in miniature, play the piano., beat 
the drum, etc., together with that of re- 
vealing the past and the future, without 
government security. For the Christian, 
there is no question of it. For even the 
unbeliever, if he reflects, the persistence 
with which the spirit-rappers preach the 
transmigration of souls ought to make 
that fantastic dream still more suspicious. 
What! to run from planet to planet, or 
else to be on this globe successively man, 
mouse, turkey, crocodile, poodle, •mule, 
elephant, would be the destiny of man- 
kind ; and mankind, deaf to the specious 
arguments of half a dozen philosophers, 
would have waited till, in the middle of 
the nineteenth century, tables beat the 
generale, to know it ! . . .If there is a 
hell, a hard and an ignominious prison 
for insolent criminals, spirits jealous of 
man, will they enter into communication 
with us to proclaim their shame, and 
revive in om^ souls the saving fear of the 



APPEOTIX. 



193 



punisliment they are undergoing? In a 
jail, are not the prisoners all honest peo- 
ple, victims of mistaken justice? Let 
Messrs. Pelletan, Jourdan, Laurent, and 
other worshippers of this nineteenth cen- 
tury, convinced that before Voltaire and 
Rousseau, the thickest darkness covered 
the earth, gravely discuss and maintain 
such Utopian fancies, if they will ; let 
the Book of the Spirits (Livre des Esprits) 
come to their aid as Satan came to the 
aid of Luther in famous nightly conversa- 
tions ; the metempsychosis shall always 
remain what it has been at all times : a 
chimera of the imagination, rejected^ at 
the same time, by Christian revelation, 
the traditions of mankind, and good 
sense. Christianity teaches that the hu- 
man soul, made to be united with a body, 
shall find again, after a temporary sepa- 
ration, its body, to which it shall be 
thenceforth reunited, for ever, in heaven 
or in hell. There is the truth. 



194 



APPENDIX. 



c. 

THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATES IN THE NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURY. 

Every period has its miseries. The 
misery of our time is the so-called philo- 
sophical justification of evil. Our ances- 
tors, too, knew human frailty, but they 
did not canonize disorder; and when they 
yielded to the unhappy inchnations of 
the flesh, they did not place it, with the 
august name of Reason, on an altar. We 
have progressed, and the justification of 
evil brings, now-a-days, its natuj:al con- 
sequence — the restoration of Satan, who 
first committed evil, and inspires it in 
us. 

Milton, an English poet of lofty genius, 
but thoroughly imbued with the spirit of 
the so-called Reformation, in his great 
poem "Paradise Lost," painted the de- 
mons, and especially their chief, as of 
grand and beautiful physiognomy, al- 
though not attempting to excuse them. 



APPENDIX, 



195 



Literature and the Stage caught up Mil- 
ton's, idea, and, carrying it still farther, 
re-opened the gates of heaven to the 
Devil, disguised as an interesting victim. 
"Long live hell!" (Vive Venfer!) cried the 
slayers of priests and the demolishers of 
churches in 1793. And that savage cry 
has more than once been heard at tho 
period of more recent social commotions ; 
it has been raised, in Switzerland, as a 
war-cry against the Catholics. But all is 
eclipsed by the versification of the thinker 
who has written the " Contemplations." 
The philosophy of M. Hugo reduces itself 
to metempsychosis extending to all. All 
suffers, but all is going helter-skelter to 
joy. "We must love all, esteem all, even 
the worst scoundrels ; there can be no 
exception — but the race of devotees. 

According to him, the instrument of 
crime, and the bolt that secures the 
criminal in his prison, alike share his 
sufferings and the sufferings of his vic- 
tim. 



196 



APPENDIX. 



Pity the prisoner, but pity the bolt. 
****** 

The axe suffers as much as the body ; the blood 

Suffers as much as the head, 0 mysteries from on high ! 

Thanks to these sufferings, (very mys- 
terious, ti^uly !) every criminal makes his 
own punishment. 

And the thorn, Caiaphas, and the reed, Pilate. . . 
Cry out to the Adorable Being. . . 
The vulture says to the sparrow in the shade : Pardon ! 
Of their crimes the stones are heard to accuse them- 
selves, 

And, under the softened eye looking down from above, 
The whole abyss is but one immense sob. . . 

Before this immense sob of vultures 
and stones, of the wicked become shrubs, 
and axes saddened by the bloody trade 
they are made to ply, divine justice must 
feel itself disarmed. Universal soften- 
ing is the prologue of universal reconcilia- 
tion. Hydras shall be seen emerging from 
the abyss, with stars on their foreheads ; 
horns shall be changed into aureolas; 
clav/s shall hold palms ; the damned shall 



APPENDIX. 



197 



go up to heaven, Belial at their head; 
finally, Jesus shall embrace Belial his 
orother, and lead him to God/' — {Louis 
Veuillot) 

Both shall be so beautiful that God's own flaming eye 
Can no longer distinguish, delighted Father as he is, 
Belial from Jesus ! 

Yery good for M. Victor Hugo ! The 
Supreme Intelligence so dazzled that it 
will no longer distinguish the Holy of 
holies from the worker of all evil ! And 
yet there are people who read this blas- 
phemous nonsense, and do not say : " It 
is absurd!" The restoration of the in- 
visible disgraced one is become, in the 
unbeheving world, a sort of accomplished 
fact, hig luitli threats for the future. 

But a word on the two best known ad- 
vocates of poor Satan. The first is M. 
Proudhon ; the second, M. Eenan. 

M. Proudhon sums himself up in his 
frightful formula : God is evil. According 
to this reckoning, Satan must be good. 



198 



APPENDIX. 



A finislied type of the perfect revolution- 
ary, M. Proudlion lias a system well con- 
nected in all its parts. This system con- 
sists in taking all things the very contrary 
of the true and the good, as announced 
by reason and conscience ; thence his ten- 
derness for Satan, whom he admires, and 
would be happy to resemble. In his 
book on "The Church and the Revolu- 
tion," he has written these lines, which 
no baptized hand of man, says Padre 
Ventura, referring to them, had written 
before : 

" Come, Satan, come, calumniated of 
priests and kings, that I may embrace 
thee, that I may clasp thee to my breast ! 
Long have I knoion thee, and iliou me, too. 
Thy works, O blessed of my heart, are 
not always either fair or good, but they 
alone give a meaning to the universe, and 
prevent it from being absurd. . , . Thou 
ennoblest riches . . . thou puttest the seal 
on virtue ... I have but one pen to serve 
thee, but it is worth millions of bulletins, 



APPENDIX. 



199 



and I here yow to lay it down only when 
the days sung by the poet {the days of 
Paganism apparently, the days ivJien Satan 
was worshipped) shall have come again." 

M. Kenan, of a very different charac- 
ter, neither knows how to hate God nor 
love Satan with such frightful energy. 
But in his "Studies on Eehgious His- 
tory," (where he invents history and re- 
ligion,) he offers, hke a houqiiet, {apropos 
to a picture of Scheffer's,) . a sentimental 
plea in favor of said " calumniated," v/ho 
is made out the most interesting person- 
age imaginable, an nnsuccessful revolution' 
ary, a Poerio of the first ages! This 
reversal of opinion is presented as the 
fair fruit of toleration and of modern 
lights. 

" Of all beings, formerly accused, whom 
the toleration of our age has freed from 
his anathema, Satan is, undeniably, the 
one who has gained most by the progress 
of light and of universal civilization." 
(M. Renan does not here pretend to let 



200 



APPENDIX. 



fly a sharp arrow against certain lights 
and certain civilization.) The Middle 
Ages, -which heard nothing of toleration, 
made him, at pleasure, wicked, tormented, 
and, worst disgrace of all, ridiculous." 
The JiigJi impartiality of our age has 
changed all that. Header, you would 
never guess the reason, especially if you 
remember that M. Kenan, hke the infe- 
rior beings of creation, ignores the exist- 
ence of God, and has so little tact as to 
boast of it : it is through respect for God ! 
" We who respect the divine spark where- 
ever it is found, hesitate to pronounce 
exclusive warrants, for fear of involving in 
our condemnation some atom of beauty." 
And, in fact, M. Eenan finds, in Satan^ 
not only an ''atom of beauty," but a great 
and ravishing beauty. Satan is the hoxl, 
the organizer of evil, and evil, for M. 
Kenan, is much more artistic, with its 
vivid and striking shades, than good, 
which, according to him, is uniform and 
monotonous. More fortunate than Proud- 



APPENDIX. 



201 



hon, M. Eenan lias received liis fees : Lo 
is High Chancellor of the great Orient of 
France 1 

So mncli absurdity confounds, so mucli 
audacity excites a legitimate indignation. 
Yet logic there leads to an impious fel- 
lowship ; the enemies of those we love not 
seem to us friends. The revolt against 
God, the wretch who hates God in pro- 
portion to the fear wherewith the justice 
of God inspires him, sees in Satan a rebel 
hke himself — like him, an enemy of God. 
He feels a sympathy for Satan. Let the 
devils again demand altars, they will ob- 
tain them ; the Pantheist choir, with M. 
Victor Hugo for leader, will sing hymns 
in honor of the ancient rebels ; the pha- 
lanx of the independent, guided by M. 
Proudhon, will relieve those who refused 
submission even to their Creator; and 
the tribe of Atheists, by the light of the 
phosphorescent phrases of M. Eenan, will 
wonder at the rich variety of these innu- 
merable quasi-gods. Paganism, demand- 



202 



APPENDIX. 



ed again by blinded men, shall be restored 
to them, and society shall fall back into 
barbarism, miraculously overcome by 
Christianity. My God, forgive these 
wretches ; they know not him whose 
cause they plead, they know not what 
they do ! . . . 




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Cranberry Township, PA 1 6060 ' 

(724)779-2111 



